Only a small percentage of climate policies instituted globally have actually resulted in any significant emissions reductions, according to a study published earlier in August in Science, a respected scientific publication.
The new study, titled “Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades,” used artificial intelligence to assess 1,500 different climate policies pursued across 41 nations between 1998 and 2022, aiming to determine which types of policies have prompted significant emissions cuts. The study’s analysis found that only 63 of these policies constituted “successful policy interventions,” meaning that just 4% of the measures evaluated in the study’s sample effectively reduced emissions.
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“Across four sectors, 41 countries, and 2 decades, we found 63 successful policy interventions with large effects that reduced total emissions between 0.6 and 1.8 [billion metric tons] of [carbon dioxide],” the study states. Moreover, most of the emissions cuts observed in the study were the result of two or more policies having a combined effect.
“We have a lot of policies out there that have not led to large emission reductions, and more policies do not necessarily equate to better outcomes,” Nicholas Koch, the head of the policy evaluation lab at Germany’s Mercator Research Institute and one of the study’s authors, told NewScientist. “What we observe is that the most frequently used policy tools, which are subsidies and regulations, alone are insufficient. Only in combination with price-based instruments – such as carbon prices, energy taxes – can they deliver substantial emission reductions.”
In other words, subsidies and regulations generally will not compel economies to bring down emissions without complementary policies that directly tax energy use or impose outright bans on certain practices like burning coal to produce electricity, according to Koch.
Richard Tol, an economics professor at England’s University of Sussex with expertise in the economics of climate policies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the study’s results are indicative of fundamental issues with green subsidies.
“If you estimate the impact of 1,500 policies, you would expect 75 of those to be statistically significant as a statistical fluke. They found only 63,” Tol told the DCNF. “Anyways, subsidies can be effective in the short run, less so in the long run as they make the offending activity more profitable. For example, a subsidy on energy saving (say, home insulation) makes energy cheaper so that people use more. Besides, many ‘green’ subsidies are designed to reward political allies rather than reduce emissions.”
Other critics of the West’s climate policies have pointed out that continued use of fossil fuels, and especially coal, by populous countries like China and India will blunt global emissions reductions while Western countries saddle themselves with the high costs of an energy transition.
China is by far the world’s leading emitter, more than doubling American emissions, while India is the world’s third-largest source and emits more than all 27 countries in the European Union put together, according to the World Resources Institute.
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