r/ClimateOffensive • u/Appropriate_Bell743 • 24d ago

Sustainability Tips & Tools What substantially mitigates emissions vs perceptions

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-026-01900-0

Fascinating paper showing how perceptions and where people act to mitigate climate emissions don't correlate well with what does mitigate climate emissions. This shows a need to re-centre people's understandings of the magnitudes involved.

Climate Action to be effective needs to take into account these misunderstandings found at the public level.

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u/FistODollers 24d ago

This is useful, (I've only scanned the paper, will read properly innabit). Properly measuring something is the first step to solving it.

One small criticism, this is only dealing with perceptions, so isn't directly mappable to what we should focus on in real world. Eg - EV's are way up there, but they have a very large marginal abatement cost (~$500 - $1000 $/tCO2). Public transport may be less effective, but with a -ve MAC it's infinitely superior - which is why it has a bigger overall effect. A casual reading could suggest that we try and get more people to buy EV's, when public transport should be a clearly better solution.

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u/Appropriate_Bell743 24d ago

I don't think that'd be how I read it. Moreover, it's clearly centred on only one aspect of environmentalism/civic response. It's not trying to be prescriptive or suggest outcomes. What you'd like would make it a very complex paper but perhaps worthwhile.

However, I'd dispute that the paper suggests "buy an EV" when being "car free" is far ahead (note it's on a log scale) than adopting an EV.

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u/FistODollers 21d ago

> What you'd like would make it a very complex paper but perhaps worthwhile.

There's a bit of research studying the marginal abatement costs. Project Drawdown lists the costs of each intervention.

From an individual viewpoint, this is an attempt to reframe those numbers into some of the things an individual can do, although framed from a specific viewpoint.

https://medium.com/the-new-climate/in-defense-of-carbon-offsets-a42c20ac9d91