Progress is Making Progress: Removing Fossil Fuels to a 2.1 Degree Celsius in the Wake of the September 2017 Paris Agreement
Humanity is barreling in the wrong direction. Unless nations get serious about increasing their ambitions, the world is on track to wildly overshoot the Paris goals, warming somewhere between 2.5 and 2.9 degrees Celsius, the report notes. That would be catastrophic, given the effects we’re already seeing at 1.1 degrees of warming, and considering that mere fractions of a degree add to the pain. This September was on average 1.8 degrees hotter than pre-industrial times, smashing the month’s previous record by 0.5 degrees. The Paris Agreement only sets a 1.5 degree limit for sustained temperatures, not monthly records.
The new report shows that reining in oil, gas, and coal operations is crucial to controlling global warming. It finds that, if humans extract and burn all the oil, gas and coal currently in development worldwide, countries would collectively emit enough greenhouse gasses to basically hit the higher temperature target under the Paris agreement.
The Paris Agreement will not allow for the production of more fossil fuels than was planned, even as the price of wind and solar energy plummets and electric vehicle adoption grows. Fransen says the issue is the pace. “Things are just not going fast enough, because we essentially wasted decades not taking action. We are taking action and it is having an effect. We need to go faster.
And the lower target is likely out of reach entirely at this point – a finding that is backed up by another recent study. The study found that progress on the elimination of fossil fuels has been too slow.
And if you zoom out even more, it’s clear that humanity has made significant progress since the landmark Paris agreement was signed in 2015. That year, U.N. analysts predicted that the planet was on track for a whopping 8 degrees Fahrenheit of warming.
That means all new oil, gas and coal extraction is essentially incompatible with avoiding catastrophic warming later this century, according to the analysis. Right now, many countries including the United States are still allowing new fossil fuel extraction.
Transitioning to renewables is sound economic policy with a host of co-benefits. In the US, the inflation reduction act is pouring hundreds of billion dollars into the green economy and has already created some 75,000 jobs. Burning less fossil fuel also improves air quality, reducing health care costs. So just do it already. “It’s both a frustration but also good news, because it does show us that it’s possible,” says Anne Olhoff, chief scientific editor of the new report. “There’s no good reason not to do this. And I think that most countries and decisionmakers are running out of good reasons for not doing so.”