News by Subject Policy & Ethics

Fears that electric cars could actually increase carbon emissions are unfounded in almost all parts of the world, news research shows. Media reports have regularly questioned whether electric cars are really 'greener' once emissions from production and generating their electricity are taken into account. But a new study by Radboud University with the universities of Exeter and Cambridge has concluded that electric cars lead to lower carbon emissions overall, even if electricity generation still involves substantial amounts of fossil fuel.

Fears that electric cars could actually increase carbon emissions are unfounded in almost all parts of the world, new research shows.

The climate crisis means that an agricultural disaster comparable to the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression can't be excluded in the long term. A new study forecasts that its effects would exhaust 94% of American wheat reserves, and echo throughout the global trade network to cause shortfalls around the world. These results demonstrate that today's global food system is highly vulnerable to shocks.

In the United States today, healthcare providers seem appropriately confused about present and future issues concerning coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In a commentary in The American Journal of Medicine, published by Elsevier, internationally recognized public health experts say that the current, incomplete totality of evidence provides cause for serious concerns, but more importantly it creates an urgent need for public health leadership that can direct the country's response with neither reassurance nor alarm.

Injecting the right dose of sulphur dioxide into Earth's upper atmosphere to thicken the layer of light reflecting aerosol particles artificially could reduce the effects of climate change overall, exacerbating change in only a small fraction of places, according to new research by UCL and Harvard.

Tropical forest ecosystems are an important part of the global carbon cycle as they take up and store large amounts of CO2. It is however uncertain how much these forests' ability to take up and store carbon differ between forests with high versus low species richness. New IIASA research sheds light on this question aiming to enhance our ability to predict tropical ecosystems' strength as global carbon sinks.