The science is clear that fossil fuels need to go
The World Needs to End Climate Disasters: The Case for a Global Phase Out of Fossil Fuels and Sequestered Emissions
No amount of clean energy is going to stop further global warming without the concurrent phase out of fossil fuels and sequestering greenhouse-gas emissions. Doing so will not be easy or painless. Political leaders are under pressure because of their economic interests. Fossil-fuel producers, such as the United Arab Emirates and the United States, will need to find other sources of revenue and create different jobs for their citizens. Policymakers have a responsibility to make sure that the burden of a phase out doesn’t fall on the world’s poor. This is the right thing to do, and it will be crucial to prevent political blowback against climate policies.
This creates wiggle room that many leaders around the world — and particularly those representing countries that rely on fossil fuels to power their economies — are keen to exploit.
Al Jaber, who is chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, is but one example. The United States under President Joe Biden is another. It supports calls to phase out fossil fuels, yet is taking record amounts of oil and gas out of the ground. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focused on expanding renewable energy in India. The nation has an ambition to represent the interests of poor countries and is continuing to build coal-burning power plants which supplied more than 75% of its electricity last year.
Wealthy countries have to lead the way. In order to help the most needy countries do their part, this means not just cutting emissions and driving down the costs of clean- energy technology, but also providing financial aid. Yet world leaders have failed to come up with enough funds.
Crucially, more than 120 countries pledged to triple the world’s renewable-energy generation capacity by 2030. The commitment would give a large step forward due to being focused on near-term action rather than long-term hope.
In the near term, the world is likely to overshoot the 1.5 C goal. This year’s climate extremes have made it clear that there is no safe level of warming, and every fraction of a degree matters. The main agenda must be to cut emissions as quickly as possible in an effort to head off expensive and potentially irreversible damage.
He says killing greenwashing doesn’t mean stopping investing in nature. Doing it right is what it means. It means distributing wealth to the Indigenous populations and farmers and communities who are living with biodiversity.”
This seemingly easy climate solution sparked a tree-planting craze by companies and leaders eager to burnish their green credentials without actually cutting their emissions, from Shell to Donald Trump. Scientists accused the Crowther study of overestimating the amount of carbon it could draw down and of not being accurate about the land suitable for forest restoration. (The study authors later corrected the paper to say tree restoration was only “one of the most effective” solutions, and could suck down at most one-third of the atmospheric carbon, with large uncertainties.)
