Scientists Just Warned We Need to Cut Emissions by 60 Percent, but the U.S. Is Years Away
Author: Jean Chemnick
The United Nations' latest climate assessment has upped the ante for energy policy in the United States, making it clear that rich nations need to cut their emissions more deeply than some of the most ambitious targets.The report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change introduced a new deadline that the world must meet to avoid the most catastrophic climate impacts. To limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius, it found that global greenhouse gas emissions must decline by 60 percent by 2035 compared with 2019 levels. That translates to a 67 percent emissions cut by 2035 from a 2005 baseline — the year the United States uses as a benchmark. Even if the country met the Biden administration's goal of cutting emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030, it would have a long way to go in five years to make a 67 percent cut a reality. “That is extraordinarily challenging,” said Robbie Orvis, senior director of modeling and analysis at Energy Innovation. One reason is what he called "capital stock turnover." It's a challenge that the world's climate scientists say is necessary to overcome to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Also on Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called on rich nations to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2040, 10 years earlier than the net-zero target set by the United States and many other developed countries. Scientists say the 1.5 C temperature goal relies on a net-zero world by 2050, but major developing players including China and India have not pledged to stop emitting until decades later.