This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing.
A UN-backed scientific panel found that nations have barely a decade to take unprecedented actions to cut emissions in half by 2030 to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. In the next 12 years, it’s estimated that global warming could increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees in Fahrenheit. By year 2100, the U.N. estimates as much as 3 – 5 degree Celsius rise or 5.4 – 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Fourth National Climate Assessment, co-written by hundreds of scientists, finds that climate change is already increasing damage to the U.S. That was followed by another report detailing the growing gap between commitments made at earlier UN conferences and what is needed to steer the planet off its calamitous course.
Even China’s top planning agency admitted that three regions — Liaoning in the northeast Rust Belt and the big coal-producing regions of Ningxia and Xinjiang in the northwest have failed to meet their targets to curb energy consumption growth and improve efficiency last year.
Stay tuned next time to find out why cutting emissions is so hard.
