Numbers tell one story about climate change. People tell another.
Dustin Tingley.Photo by Grace DuVal Science & Tech Numbers tell one story about climate change. People tell another. Alvin Powell Harvard Staff Writer June 10, 2025 7 min read Policy expert Dustin Tingley studies transition to renewable energy, knows from work, life how economic shifts rattle through communities A series focused on the personal side of Harvard research and teaching. Over the last decade, Dustin Tingley has reconsidered his beliefs about expertise. As a public policy expert, Tingley has devised quantitative ways to understand the messy problems and sometimes messier datasets that abound in political economy, international trade, and political science. In recent years, he has turned his attention to the transition to renewable energy amid the quickening pace of climate change. As he has done so, Tingley has found himself shifting focus from datasets that tell a story in numbers to stories told by people experiencing changing economic circumstances and climate-stressed times. “I came to the realization that there was so...