World leaders are meeting in Egypt next week for this year’s United Nations climate summit. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is planning to skip COP27, calling it little more than an occasion for greenwashing. She’s right to be frustrated with the state of the global response to this crisis.
The world is way off track. Most governments are falling far short of their climate goals, and the window is rapidly closing to prevent a dangerous overheating of the planet, a new United Nations report found. To avert catastrophic climate change, we must cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030, but world leaders’ current commitments will cut them by only 5% to 10%.
The only way to limit global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit or “well below” 3.6 degrees, the goals nearly every nation agreed to under the 2015 Paris agreement, is with bold, transformative policy shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy. But instead, global average temperatures are on track to rise an unthinkable 5 degrees above preindustrial levels by century’s end.
