The world is 'woefully off track' on dozens of climate goals, scientists ... - The Washington Post

The world is ‘woefully off track’ on climate goals, scientists find - The Washington Post

Among the many dramatic ways society must transform to limit the worst effects of climate change, the world is only moving fast enough on one of them — the uptake of electric vehicles, according to a new report from seven climate organizations looking at 42 indicators of climate progress.

While the takeaway is familiar — that the world is well shy of its stated goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the State of Climate Action report provides a detailed diagnosis of the factors leading the planet astray. Those factors touch on almost every aspect of life, from how power is generated, how people commute, how food is produced, how buildings function and how readily finance flows to developing countries.

“We are woefully off track,” said Kelly Levin, the chief of science, data and systems change at the Bezos Earth Fund, one of the groups involved in the research. (The fund was created by Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post.)

The 42 indicators are not formally written into the Paris agreement, but were instead derived by the nonprofit organizations, which analyzed how various sectors would need to transform by 2030 to meet the 1.5 goal. Using similar methods last year, the groups found that the world was off track on every count.

The rise of EVs, then, points to a bright spot in the effort to cut down on emissions. Last year, EVs accounted for 10 percent of all new vehicles sold — up from 1.6 percent in 2018. Prices are falling. Incentives, particularly in developed countries, are juicing growth. The report judged that EVs are at the early stage of a stratospheric leap, and can meet the goal of accounting for at least 75 percent of sales by 2030.

Still, road transport accounts for less than 6 percent of total global emissions.

The share of coal, the most emissions-intensive fossil fuel, has been drifting slowly downward for the last decade. But the phase-down would need to accelerate sevenfold to meet the 2030 target. Swift and massive changes would also be needed elsewhere, including in the use of unabated gas, despite the fact that countries have been using gas as a bridge while more renewables come online.

Finance for low-carbon solutions and other climate projects is growing — just nowhere fast enough, the report said. Joe Thwaites, a senior advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that most of the growth in climate finance has been happening in a few major economies — the United States, Europe, China, India and Brazil.

“Now to be clear, increased investment in these countries is absolutely a good thing,” Thwaites said. “The problem is, the poorest and most vulnerable countries are getting left behind.”

Developing countries, not counting China, need an estimated $2.4 trillion annually in climate investment by 2030 to keep pace with the 1.5 goal.

“Yet at present they’re getting about a tenth of it,” he said. “So it needs to grow by an order of magnitude.”

The power sector plays the largest role in determining how quickly the world can ramp down emissions, but the report also touches on everything from public transportation (cities this decade need to dramatically scale up bus lanes and metro lines) to agricultural production, where greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow.

A separate progress report released on Tuesday by the United Nations, assessing nations’ climate pledges, showed that these plans — even if fully implemented — would lead to 2030 emissions levels being higher than they were in 2010. That is far short of the 43 percent decrease that would be consistent with the 1.5 goal.

The findings come at a time of year heavy with climate reports, including several from the United Nations, that create a drumbeat of urgent warnings and dire projections leading to COP, hosted this year by a petrostate, the United Arab Emirates. It’s a year that is almost certain to be the hottest on record, with wildfires and marine heat waves and growing food shortages in the poorest parts of the world. Though temperatures have been amplified by El Niño, some scientists have said that heat extremes exceed even what is demonstrated in models.

The mechanics of the global climate negotiations play out amid that backdrop — this year, with a process known as a stocktake, an every-five-years assessment of climate goals that is part of the Paris agreement. The State of Climate Action is meant to complement that evaluation process, which concludes at COP.

The authors portray the 1.5 goal as something that is technically feasible — at least with accelerated, across-the-board effort.

“A shift from business-as-usual, incremental change into emergency mode is now needed to deliver this level of required acceleration,” the report says.

But recent research suggests that the world has only six years left at current emissions levels before it exceeds the carbon budget that would keep temperature increases below 1.5. Emissions hit a record level in 2022, and though a peak could be approaching, they are projected to rise again in 2023.

“If you’re going to apply any scientific perspective to this, I don’t think you could see in any way that 1.5 is achievable,” said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Norway, who was not involved in the report

More on climate change

Understanding our climate: Global warming is a real phenomenon, and weather disasters are undeniably linked to it. As temperatures rise, heat waves are more often sweeping the globe — and parts of the world are becoming too hot to survive.

What can be done? The Post is tracking a variety of climate solutions, as well as the Biden administration’s actions on environmental issues. It can feel overwhelming facing the impacts of climate change, but there are ways to cope with climate anxiety.

Inventive solutions: Some people have built off-the-grid homes from trash to stand up to a changing climate. As seas rise, others are exploring how to harness marine energy.

What about your role in climate change? Our climate coach Michael J. Coren is answering questions about environmental choices in our everyday lives. Submit yours here. You can also sign up for our Climate Coach newsletter.

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