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The United Nations’ panel to deal with climate change has a new deadline to stop using fossil fuels: the end of this decade.
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If we make the recommended changes, which is no easy feat, we can limit the dire effects of runaway global warming.
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Green energy costs are falling, which means more countries are taking up alternatives to fossil fuels.
Humanity must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this decade, warns the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of experts convened by the United Nations. In a new report published Monday—compiled by 278 experts from 65 countries—the IPCC strongly advises that the world should dramatically accelerate efforts over the next few years to slash coal, oil, and natural gas emissions.
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Burning coal, oil, and natural gas for energy is the major cause of rapid planet-wide heating. Since the 19th century, we have already heated the planet by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius. Our living planet imbibes and accumulates solar energy over hundreds of millions of years; the end result of that process is the creation of fossil fuels like petroleum and natural gas. Those fuels are concentrated in a form that stores absolutely massive amounts of carbon.
At-a-Glance
The good news: Green energy costs have fallen significantly, giving humanity a hopeful path for the future.
The bad news: Our only hope to avoid worsening global warming effects—including more extreme floods, droughts, wildfires, and even ecosystem collapse—is to veer away from fossil fuels by the end of this decade. However, political inertia combined with the need to provide basic electricity and cooking fuel to hundreds of millions of people in developing nations, is slowing the transition to clean energy. Meanwhile, many countries are woefully unprepared to deal with disasters such as sea level rise or fatal heat waves, if temperatures keep rising at the current rate.
When we burn a fossil fuel such as coal, today considered an everyday convenience and a necessity, we are releasing all of that carbon far more rapidly than Earth is able to reabsorb it. The resulting greenhouse effect, accelerated since the Industrial Revolution, is the catalyst for climate disasters that have cost many human lives and billions of dollars in damage. Climate-related destruction last year in the United States alone totaled about $145 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The task ahead is formidable, the report concedes—nations need to collectively reduce their planet-warming emissions by roughly 45 percent over the next eight years. They need to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere completely by the early 2050s, climate scientists found. The report estimates that governments and companies will have to invest three to six times as much as they currently do toward encouraging clean energy and emissions cuts. The world currently spends roughly $600 billion annually on these efforts, the report says. Yet, government policies are only expected to reduce global emissions by a few percentage points this decade.
“We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree limit agreed [to] in Paris,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres says in a statement he released online. “To keep the 1.5-degree limit agreed [to] in Paris within reach, we need to cut global emissions by 45 percent this decade. But current climate pledges would mean a 14 percent increase in emissions. And most major emitters are not taking the steps needed to fulfill even these inadequate promises.”
Fortunately, clean energy costs have dropped since 2010. Solar panels and lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles are 85 percent cheaper, and wind turbines cost half as much as they did 12 years ago.
Approved by 195 governments, this year’s IPCC report includes dozens of strategies to reach the goal of halting global warming. Here are its top four recommendations for policymakers, governments, industries, and all those who can affect large-scale energy infrastructure.
1️⃣ Clean Up Power Plants
All countries with power plants need to shut down most of the world’s coal and natural gas plants, or install carbon capture technology that can trap emissions and bury them underground. Countries need to move to green energy production using wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, or hydropower sources. This is perhaps the most expensive part of the changes required, the report notes.
2️⃣ Restructure Industries and Transportation to Run on Clean, Green Electricity
This would mean replacing gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles (the energy grid powering those vehicles has to have low carbon emissions, too.) Countries should be using electric heat instead of gas in homes and industries. Steel mills that currently burn coal should be switching to electric furnaces. Airplanes are a major source of carbon emissions, and they need to undergo fuel changes as well, a daunting task at present because airplanes only burn fossil fuels. Other options, like making them electric, would require too large of a battery to fly.
3️⃣ Reduce Total Energy Demand
To reduce the demands on a nation’s energy grid, countries should upgrade home and building insulation to waste less energy on heating and cooling, expand public transportation options for people to reduce the number of cars on the road, recycle more raw materials, and make factories more energy efficient. These changes could help cut emissions by as much as 40 to 70 percent by 2050, according to the report.
4️⃣ Change Our Land Use
Deforestation and agriculture account for about one-fifth of global greenhouse gasses. Cattle and meat-production farms are the source of much methane and carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. (For instance, each year, a single cow burps about 220 pounds of methane.) People continue to cut down forests and rainforests such as the Amazon, though the latter is considered vital to the world’s ecosystem balance.
“Because these different actions are connected, it means all relevant companies, industries and stakeholders would need to be involved to increase the support and chance of successful implementation,” the report states, adding that the effective implementation of such changes are “rooted in the underlying structure of societies.” Governments must work with non-government and international organizations to deploy low-emission and carbon-capturing technologies across the globe. If done right, the shift to green energy will lead to new jobs, major investments, and improved conditions for all, the report states. “Implementing the right policies and investments can help to address the challenges of how to reduce emissions without constraining development.”
Along the way, people need to innovate. Governments and businesses must develop new fuels and industrial processes to replace coal and gas-heavy industries such as cement and glass. While countries move to greener ways of living and producing, they will also have to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year by the middle of the century, scientists contributing to the report say. Planting more trees is just the beginning. Technologies to remove carbon from our atmosphere are still in development. Some, like Petra Nova, are designed to collect carbon dioxide as it is created at power plants, and then store it underground.
Many problems counter the swift progress needed, the report notes. Some developing countries are dependent on fossil fuels and don’t have the means to quickly change their energy infrastructures. They will need investment and help from richer nations, UN representatives write in the report. Fossil fuel industries are resistant to change, as are some politicians that would lose support in the short term by veering away from traditional energy industries.
Disinformation campaigns have helped polarize and politicize the issues, dividing people and preventing the potential to work together to make changes, Guterres writes. “A shift to renewables will mend our broken global energy mix and offer hope to millions of people suffering climate impacts today. Climate promises and plans must be turned into reality and action, now. It is time to stop burning our planet, and start investing in the abundant renewable energy all around us.”
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