Findings and Solutions

Human activity is mainly responsible for climate change, which affects human populations and most animal and plant ecosystems. The effects, which have become increasingly significant since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, are both local and global. They are also unevenly distributed across economic sectors, regions, and countries.

The parties responsible for climate change are also unevenly distributed across sectors, regions, countries, and socio-economic status. Climate change creates externalities: the agents responsible for it typically disregard the negative effects of their actions on other agents and may not even be aware of them.

The causes and effects of climate change are extremely complex. Many people do not even understand the basics, and public ignorance is exacerbated by misinformation and fake news conveyed by vested interests and social media. Even if CO2 emissions per unit of production decrease, overall emissions may continue to rise due to growth in global production. Moreover, climate skepticism remains widespread, even among academics.

Policies to combat climate change are needed at different temporal and spatial scales. Responsibilities must be recognized, and cooperation is necessary. The major challenge in the fight against climate change is to decarbonize society without unduly sacrificing living standards.

Climate change is the subject of a great deal of research, and many policies have been proposed, including: regulation of emissions all sources; effective pricing of externalities and the use of natural resources; research and development and technology transfer; dissemination of information at all levels of society; modification of preferences and behavior; adaptation to climate change; redistribution of resources within and between countries, and so on. Some of these policies and other actions have been implemented on a small scale around the world. However, application had been partial, uneven, and slow. This amounts to inaction in the fight against climate change. Often, a policy is not intrinsically good or bad; what matters is whether and how it is implemented.

There are many stakeholders in climate change: individual citizens, industries, and governments at all levels, including international bodies such as the UN. These agents have different objectives, and their assessments and attitudes are influenced by pressure groups, lobbies and the media. The result is often disagreement and inaction.