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Scientists and policy experts say that would require the world to move off fossil fuels between about 2050 and the end of the century. To reach the more ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, some researchers say the world will need to reach zero net carbon emissions sometime between about 2030 and 2050.

That level of warming is measured as the average temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution.

Failure to set a cap could result in superdroughts, deadlier heat waves, mass extinctions of plants and animals, megafloods and rising seas that could wipe some island countries off the map. The only way to reach the goal, scientists say, is to eliminate fossil fuels.

The entire agreement enters into force once 55 countries (who must account for 55% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions) have ratified it.

The agreement calls for developed countries to raise at least $100 billion annually in order to assist developing countries.

China and the United States, respectively, account for about 24% and 14% of total greenhouse gas emissions

That means if the world's biggest polluters don't sign off on the agreement, enacting it could prove challenging.

Rather, it sets up a bottom-up system in which each country sets its own goal -- which the agreement calls a "nationally determined contribution" -- and then must explain how it plans to reach that objective. Those pledges must be increased over time, and starting in 2018 each country will have to submit new plans every five years.

Many countries actually submitted their new plans before COP21 started last month -- but those pledges aren't enough to keep warming below the 2 degrees target

Another issue, according to observers, was whether there would be reparations paid to countries that will see irreparable damage from climate change but have done almost nothing to cause it.

The agreement doesn't mandate exactly how much each country must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

resident Barack Obama praised a landmark climate change agreement approved Saturday in Paris, saying it could be "a turning point for the world."

"The Paris agreement establishes the enduring framework the world needs to solve the climate crisis,"

"It creates the mechanism, the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in an effective way."

"I believe this moment can be a turning point for the world," Obama said, calling the agreement "the best chance we have to save the one planet that we've got."

The accord achieved one major goal. It limits average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures and strives for a limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) if possible.

hat urgency is at odds with the stance of the Trump administration, which has rolled back several Obama-era environmental regulations and incentivized the production of fossil fuels. Trump also has said he plans to withdraw the nation from the Paris climate accord and questioned the science of climate change just last month, saying on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that “I don’t know that it’s man-made” and that the warming trend “could very well go back.”

“This report draws a direct connection between the warming atmosphere and the resulting changes that affect Americans' lives, communities, and livelihoods, now and in the future,” the document reads, concluding that “the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans' physical, social, and economic well-being are rising.

The report finds that the continental United States already is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was 100 years ago, surrounded by seas that are on average nine inches higher and being racked by far worse heat waves than the nation experienced only 50 years ago. But those figures offer only the prelude to even more potentially severe impacts. The report suggests that by 2050, the country could see as much as 2.3 additional degrees of warming in the continental United States. By that same year, in a high-end global-warming scenario, coral reefs in Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific territories could be bleaching every single year — conditions in which their survival would be in severe doubt. A record-warm year like 2016 would become routine.

In another major step, the authors of the new report have begun to put dollar signs next to projected climate damage, specifically within the United States. In a worst-case climate-change scenario, the document finds, labor-related losses by the year 2090 as a result of extreme heat — the sort that makes it difficult to work outdoors or seriously lowers productivity — could amount to an estimated $155 billion annually. Deaths from temperature extremes could take an economic toll of $141 billion per year in the same year, while coastal property damage could total $118 billion yearly, researchers found

Of course, mitigating climate change would also mitigate this damage, by as much as 58 percent in the case of high-temperature related deaths, the report finds.

The categorical tone of the new assessments reflects scientists' growing confidence in the ability to detect the role of a changing climate in individual extreme events, such as heat waves and droughts. At the same time, increasingly sophisticated computer simulations now allow them to project future changes in highly specific regions of the country

The Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report, which examines all of North America (not just the United States), finds that over a decade, greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels declined by 1 percent per year. The result is that while North America emitted 24 percent of the world’s emissions in 2004, that was down to 17 percent in 2013. This occurred in part thanks to improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency, the growth of renewable energy and the swapping of coal-burning for natural gas.

“For the globe, we’re still going up, but regionally, there have been these changes in how humans have been acting that have caused our emissions to go down,” said Ted Schuur, a Northern Arizona University expert on permafrost carbon

The report concludes that it appears possible to for economies to grow — at least in the United States, Mexico and Canada — without increasing overall emissions of greenhouse gases. That would be an important signal for the ability of the world to slow climate change over the course of the century

So far, the biggest shift has been in green-conscious Sweden, where airline executives blame increased train travel — up one-third this summer compared with a year ago — for a drop in air passenger traffic.

The newly coined concept of flygskam, or “flight shame,” has turned some Swedes bashful about their globe-trotting. A guerrilla campaign used Instagram to tally the planet-busting travels of top Swedish celebrities.

Hilm, 31, a health-care consultant who was on his way to hike across Austria for eight days, said he tried to live an environmentally responsible life. “I don’t drive a car. I eat mostly vegetarian. I live in an apartment, not a big house.”

He was stunned when he assessed the impact of his flights. “I did one of those calculators you can do online,” he said, “and 80 percent of my emissions were from travel.

“I don’t want to say I’ll never fly again, but I do want to be conscious about the decisions I make,”

What was it worth? Measuring carbon dioxide emissions from travel can be an inexact science. One popular online calculator suggested that Hilm’s trip would have led to about 577 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions if he had flown, compared with 118 pounds by rail, a savings of 80 percent.

In the first six months of 2019, air passenger traffic was down 3.8 percent in Sweden compared with the previous year. Climate concerns are among several reasons for the downtur

Across Europe, air travel still ticked up — by 4.4 percent — in the first quarter of 2019

for young, green Europeans, saying no to flying is becoming a thing.

The shift has been inspired in part by Greta Thunberg

Thunberg has not been on a plane since 2015. This week, she said she would soon travel to the United States — by sailboat.

called Tagsemester, or Train Vacatio

The aviation sector generates about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — meaning it’s only a small fraction of the problem

Jet fuel is currently untaxed in the E.U., unlike in the United States. France this month announced it would introduce an eco-tax on flights originating at French airports, with the money to be reinvested in rail networks and other environmentally friendly transport. Several other European countries have imposed or increased flight taxes. The Dutch government is lobbying for an E.U.-wide tax on aviation.

SAS, the largest airline in Scandinavia, is ending in-flight duty-free sales and asking passengers to pre-book meals so planes can be lighter and more fuel-efficient. Pilots have been urged to taxi on the ground with only one engine switched on.

He said the airline was pushing to expand its use of renewable fuels as quickly as possible.

Climate change experts caution that meaningful shifts will need to happen on a structural level that goes beyond any individual’s private actions. 

“In terms of personal climate activism broadly, whether you’re talking about aviation, reducing the amount of meat you eat, consumption choices, the answer is always: It is important, but it is insufficient,” said Greg Carlock, a manager at the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.

That’s scary because all efforts at the moment are assuming if we reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 we can limit warming to 1.5C. That might now be rather too optimistic

Add into the mix came further news this week that glaciers appear to be melting 10 to 100 times faster than expected.

OK, here’s both sides of the debate – for well over 40 years scientists have been researching and testing evidence that climate change is occurring due to CO2 emissions. They have found conclusive evidence that there is a link and that on the current path by 2100 global temperatures will likely reach 3C above pre-industrial levels.

The other side is that they have kept researching and testing the data, and sorry, they were wrong – it’s even worse than they thought.

Senate Bill 1530 would set a gradually more stringent cap on statewide carbon dioxide emissions and require polluters from the transportation fuels, utility and industrial sectors to acquire “emissions allowances” to cover every metric ton of their emissions.Democrats have made concessions to Republicans and other opponents of the bill, including exempting a geographically large portion of the state from fees on gas and diesel indefinitely. But Democrats, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, have also voted down numerous amendments proposed by Republicans.

Brown left open the possibility she might call lawmakers back in a special session, and Courtney said he’s holding out hope Republicans will return before the March 8 deadline in the current session and take up those important bills, as they did in 2019 during a marathon final weekend of the session. “I want to continue to work very hard on all these other things so that if we ever did come back, we could really run the budgets and run everything as fast as we could the way we did on that famous Sunday in the general session when we passed I don’t know how many bills in two hours.

US coal companies had already lost 90% of their value, he noted, but banks were also at risk. “Just like in any other major structural change, those banks overexposed to the sunset sectors will suffer accordingly,” he told the Guardian.

“Some [assets] will go up, many will go down. The question is whether the transition is smooth or is it something that is delayed and then happens very abruptly. That is an open question,” he said. “The longer the adjustment is delayed in the real economy, the greater the risk that there is a sharp adjustment.”

Far from damaging the global economy, climate action bolsters economic growth, according to Carney. “There is a need for [action] to achieve net zero emissions, but actually it comes at a time when there is a need for a big increase in investment globally to accelerate the pace of global growth, to help get global interest rates up, to get us out of this low-growth, low-interest-rate trap we are in.”

“Certainly the UK financial system is one of the most sophisticated at managing this risk. The UK can extend that lead, for the good of the UK, for the good of the world,” he said. “A number of the industrial solutions draw on the strengths of UK innovation, from the use of artificial intelligence in energy systems through to potentially advanced materials like graphene. There is a big upside for the UK economy.”

Reacting to the Guardian’s revelations about fossil fuel companies, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the UK Labour party, said: “Labour will delist companies that fail to meet environmental criteria from the [London Stock Exchange], and reform the finance sector to make it part of the solution to climate change instead of lending to companies that are part of the problem.”

The rollback of water quality rules has endangered drinking water, fisheries and recreational waters that support the health and economies of communities throughout the country. The failure to adequately fund cleanups at Superfund sites has left communities with contaminated land, fenced off from any beneficial use for years as remediation is delayed.

By August 2017, it was clear that EPA leadership had little regard for the expertise and historical knowledge of its career employees. That’s when I made the decision to publicly protest against the Trump administration when resigning from the agency after 33 years of service.

Replace the Obama Clean Power Plan, which limited harmful emissions from power plants, with a rule that is projected to significantly increase exposure to fine particles and ozone in the air. More people, especially those living in frontline communities, will have heart attacks; suffer from asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory diseases; and miss days of work and school because of illness.

oll back successful clean car regulations and fuel economy standards, which reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improved air quality and increased fuel economy. The rollback is projected to increase GHG emissions by 1.5bn metric tons through 2040, contributing to the destructive impacts of climate change, and resulting in 18,500 more premature deaths by 2050.

ctions by the Trump administration over the past four years have set us back. But we will not let this administration obliterate 50 years of environmental and public health progress. We owe that to the generation that will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Earth Day in 2070.

Other global car firms including Renault-Nissan, Ford and General Motors are all working to develop electric cars in China.

China wants electric battery cars and plug-in hybrids to account for at least one-fifth of its vehicle sales by 2025.

The shift will also have a knock-on effect on oil demand in China. The country is currently the world's second-largest oil consumer after the US.

All told, CO2 emissions from fossil fuels dropped by 2.6 billion metric tons in 2020, a 7 percent reduction from 2019, driven in large part by transportation declines.

Third-quarter revenues for Carnival Corporation, the industry’s biggest player, showed a year-to-year decline of 99.5 percent — to $31 million in 2020, down from $6.5 billion in 2019.

All told, CO2 emissions from fossil fuels dropped by 2.6 billion metric tons in 2020, a 7 percent reduction from 2019, driven in large part by transportation declines.

The figures tell the story of a rebound that’s slightly stronger than that of air travel: a sharp drop in March and April, as state and local restrictions fell into place, followed by a gradual rise to around 80 percent of 2019 levels.

Some national parks located near cities served as convenient recreational escapes throughout the pandemic. At Cuyahoga Valley National Park, 2020 numbers exceeded 2019 numbers from March through December. At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, numbers surged after a 46-day closure in the spring and partial closures through August; between June and December, the park saw one million additional visits compared to the same time period in 2019.

But global warming changed things. Seas are rising. Homes are washing away. Much of the nation could become unlivable in the coming decade.Now, the Marshall Islands are putting forward a moonshot environmental plan, a carbon tax that would penalize polluters. It is a shot across the bow of the I.M.O.’s industrial and political forces.

At United Nations climate meetings, countries are typically represented by senior politicians and delegations of government officials. At the maritime organization’s environmental committee, however, one in four delegates comes from industry, according to separate analyses by The New York Times and the nonprofit group Influence Map.

The Cook Islands, another Pacific archipelago, make a similar argument. Like the Marshalls, they face rising seas and an uncertain future. But the more immediate concerns are jobs and cost of living, said Joshua Mitchell, of the country’s foreign office. “Existential questions have to be balanced against the priorities of the country in the moment,” he said.

Ultimately, France ceded to nearly all of China’s requests, records show. The dirtiest ships would not be grounded. Shipowners would file plans saying they intended to improve, would not be required to actually improve.

German delegates were so upset that they threatened to oppose the deal, likely triggering a cascade of defections, according to three people involved in the talks. But European Union officials rallied countries behind the compromise, arguing that Europe could not be seen as standing in the way even limited progress.

And just last week, delegates met in secret to debate what should constitute a passing grade under the new rating system. Under pressure from China, Brazil and others, the delegates set the bar so low that emissions can continue to rise — at roughly the same pace as if there had been no regulation at all.

Countries looking to take part in the programme will need to have the reduction in deforestation-linked emissions verified by a new, more rigorous standard assessed at the national level by an independent third party, the coalition said in a statement.With applications due by July 2021 and the aim of signing contracts before the end of the year, payments would be based on emissions reductions linked to reducing levels of deforestation or degradation, or by restoring forests, between 2022 and 2026.

Companies looking to take part in the project will only be allowed to join if they can show a commitment to "deep voluntary cuts" in their own emissions, in line with science-based targets and the Paris Agreement on climate.

In the United States, the warming was most significant in the Northeast and Southwest.

With the 2020 results, the last seven years have been the warmest since the beginning of modern record-keeping nearly a century and a half ago, Dr. Schmidt said.

The planet has warmed more than 1 degree Celsius (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, when the spread of industrialization led to rising emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and the pace has accelerated in recent decades.

Dr. Schmidt said his team and others have been studying the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on 2020 temperatures. Lockdown orders and the economic slowdown reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 10 percent in the United States alone, according to a recent report.

Dr. Schmidt said efforts were underway to quantify the effect over the past year. “The numbers aren’t large,” he said, but they may have played a role in making 2020 a record-tying year.

It exposes a huge gap, with fossil fuel production in 2030 heading for 50% more than is consistent with 2C, and 120% more than that for 1.5C.

Most action to tackle the climate crisis involves reducing emissions, but Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme, said a focus on fossil fuel production was long overdue.

“We’re in a deep hole – and we need to stop digging,”

It complements an earlier UN analysis showing the current Paris agreement pledges to cut emissions would still lead to a catastrophic 3-4C rise.

Most of the action pledges made by countries under the Paris deal do not even mention changes to production.

The UK is a “striking” example of this mismatch, said Cleo Verkuijl, at the SEI’s centre in Oxford, UK. It was the first major economy to commit to net zero emissions by 2050, she said, but also subsidises fossil fuel production at home and abroad and intends to extract “every drop of oil and gas” from its North Sea field

The report highlights the nations that are taking some action, including the closure of most coal mines in Spain and some in China, along with the end of new offshore oil and gas exploration licences in New Zealand and some parts of the Arctic governed by Canada, the US and Norway.

The report said it was crucial that workers in fossil fuel industries were helped into new employment as production ramped down. “Leaders need to [talk with] workers and their unions to plan a just transition away from fossil fuels,

The analysis is based on the published national plans of eight key producers: Australia, Canada, Russia, US, China, India, Indonesia and Norway, which account for 60% of global fossil fuel production

Shell has a three-year target beginning in 2019 to reduce its carbon footprint by 2-3%, while ExxonMobil has invested $9 billion over almost two decades in lower-emission energy solution

"The first immediate task for all parts of the industry is reducing the carbon footprint of their own operations," said Birol.

"As of today, around 15% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions come from the process of getting oil and gas out of the ground and to consumers. A large part of these emissions can be brought down relatively quickly and easily," he said.

The cost of developing these technologies represent an investment in companies' ability to prosper in the long term, the report said.

The seven largest oil and gas companies account for just 12% of oil and gas reserves, 15% of production and 10% of emissions from industry operations, according to the report.

The International Energy Agency's report will be presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday.

Allbirds is also largely known for everyday, "athleisure" sneakers, rather than performance sports shoes. The new partnership will combine its background in sustainability with Adidas' expertise in performance footwear.

Making a standard sneaker creates, on average, about 12.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, a common measurement for carbon footprint. Allbirds' products average 7.6 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, according to the company's website.

Adidas and Allbirds are aiming for between 2 and 3 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in the first version of their shoe collaboration, with later iterations moving toward zero emissions, Adidas' Carnes said.

If a less democratic world is needed to deal with the climate, who are the people who’d like to bring a less democratic world into being?

The aim is not to reach net zero faster – neither party has laid out workable plans to do so – but to endear climate-conscious voters to an ethno-nationalist cause.

It’s not just the right, however, that has considered a turn away from democracy for the planet’s sake.

As much as US and UK liberals have talked up the promise of spreading democracy throughout the world this century, though, many centrists – as the Progressive International’s David Adler wrote in 2018 – are pretty down on democracy itself. Analysing the World Values and the European Values surveys, Adler found that centrists in wealthy countries were less supportive of democracy than their counterparts on either the left or the far right. Less than half of centrists in the US thought elections were essential; only 25% saw civil rights as a critical feature of democracy.

Actually existing centrist politicians, meanwhile, such as Emmanuel Macron in France, haven’t shown any willingness to address the climate crisis at the speed or scale it demands.

Openly authoritarian governments hardly fare better. China has rolled out an impressive array of green technologies over the last decade with massive industrial policy. Yet still it continues to prioritise fossil-fuelled growth, with its 14th five-year plan pledging to reduce “emissions intensity” by just 18% through 2025, and the planned opening of 43 new coal-fuelled power stations

But India, like China, has missed the deadline to update its emissions reduction plan in advance of UN climate talks in Glasgow this November.

There is simply no class of enlightened technocrats in powerful governments waiting in the wings to save the day.

A proposal for curbing emissions from the developed world so that the billion individuals who live without electricity can enjoy its benefits would probably pass in a landslide in a world referendum,” the writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor has argued, “but it would likely fail if the vote were limited to people in the wealthiest countries.”

In the less upbeat SSP3, “resurgent nationalism” and “concerns about competitiveness and security” start to emerge as countries go their own way in trying to adapt to and (more rarely) mitigate rising temperatures.

A best-case scenario detailed in their report by IPCC scientists, Shared Socioeconomic Economic Pathway 1, involves “more inclusive development” and unprecedented collaboration among the world’s governments to manage the global commons

The best hope in the short term is for a popular front to browbeat the middling centrists who claim to “believe science” into actually acting on it, and beating back the illiberal right accordingly.