To save the world from the worst ravages of climate change, slashing carbon pollution is no longer enough – CO2 will also need to be sucked out of the atmosphere and buried, a landmark UN report is expected to say on Monday.
If humanity had started to curb greenhouse gas emissions 20 years ago, an annual decrease of two percent out to 2030 would have put us on the right path. Challenging, but doable. Instead, the emissions climbed another 20 percent to more than 40 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2021.
This means an abrupt drop in carbon emissions of six or seven percent a year is needed to avoid breaching the Paris climate treaty’s goal of capping global warming at “well below” two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Staying under the safer aspirational threshold of 1.5C would mean an even steeper decline.
