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Drought and heatwaves are inextricably linked, and have devastating socio-economic and environmental impacts. This issue features a suite of articles outlining how these extreme events may increase in magnitude and frequency with anthropogenic warming, highlighting the increased need to mitigate and adapt to future conditions.
Sometimes policymakers have backed the wrong technologies, lacked ambition or simply not engaged with potential emissions reductions. Sonja van Renssen explores climate policies that have not delivered and why.
Ambition regarding climate change at the national level is critical but is often calibrated with the projected costs — as estimated by a small suite of energy–economic models. Weaknesses in several key areas in these models will continue to distort policy design unless collectively addressed by a diversity of researchers.
Awareness of the threats to mental health posed by climate change leads to questions about the potential impacts on climate scientists because they are immersed in depressing information and may face apathy, denial and even hostility from others. But they also have sources of resilience.
Research on climate change mitigation tends to focus on supply-side technology solutions. A better understanding of demand-side solutions is missing. We propose a transdisciplinary approach to identify demand-side climate solutions, investigate their mitigation potential, detail policy measures and assess their implications for well-being.
The health impacts of climate change are being increasingly recognized, but mental health is often excluded from this discussion. In this issue we feature a collection of articles on climate change and mental health that highlight important directions for future research.
The new rules of the EU ETS will fundamentally change its character. The long-term cap on emissions will become a function of past and future market outcomes, temporarily puncturing the waterbed and having retroactive impacts on GHG abatement from overlapping policies.
China recently announced its national emissions trading scheme, advancing market-based approaches to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Its evolution over coming years will determine whether it becomes an effective part of China’s portfolio of climate policies.
