Paris: Science is very clear: to close global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius – given that we are already in 1.1c – means cutting carbon pollution to two in 2030, and to zero in the Middle Ages.
But how to do that? What is the meaning of the target of the critical Paris agreement meaning to our economy and our everyday life? What, in other words, do we have to change? “Everything,” said Henri Wafan, a low emission development expert in France, Iddri Tank Think, and the main author of the UN 2018 Climate Report which first described the route to the 1.5C world.
“And it must be root – & – change of stock,” he told AFP.
“We must change the way we produce and consume energy, the way we make major industrial products, the way we move from one place to another, heat ourselves.” Facing this extraordinary task, the temptation is possible to attack the problem of one sector at once.
But we haven’t left enough time for that, according to experts.
“If we want to increase the level consistent with the 1.5c line, we must do everything at the same time, and soon,” said Anne Olhoff, a researcher at the Danish Engineering University and Annual UN author “Emission Gap” Report tracking of our progress – or the shortcomings – In achieving that goal.
Energy, Agriculture, Construction, Transportation, Industry and Forestry – These are six sectors to target if humanity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from almost 60 to 25 billion tons of CO2 or the equivalent in other gases, experts agree.
Energy production, which accounts for more than 70 percent of emissions, is widely seen in the best place to make fast profits, especially electricity, which accounts for half of these emissions.
“If you have to choose one sector, it’s energy, not just because the potential reduction in emissions is the biggest but also because there are several easy wins,” Olhoff told AFP.
“We have the technology needed to realize this, especially the problem of political will.” Fossil fuels with the biggest target behind it are the dirtiest and most intensive carbon: coal.
“The coal power plant, which accounts for around 40 percent of the current total electricity, needs to be removed in two decades,” said Matthew Gidden, the lead team for the mitigation path in NGO climate research.
Rich countries need to lead, and must have all of their carbon coal plants closed in 2030, he said.
In the European Union, it means three closures every two weeks for the next ten years.
In the US, it will mean one power plant closed every 14 days.
But China burns half the coal consumed throughout the world, so unless Beijing follows a 1.5c goal quickly out of reach.
“If you turn off 1,082 Chinese coal power plants at the required level in line with the Paris agreement, one factory needs to be closed every week,” with the latter closing around 2040, Gidden said.
That is the deadline of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has been established for the global electricity sector – 40 percent of whom are currently supported by coal – become neutral carbon, the aim that also needs to increase the capacity of the sun and wind by four times 2030.
But it makes electric carbon neutral Not enough – every sector must clean up the emissions.
In transportation, the IEA called for the last internal combustion engine to be sold no later than 2035.
In the field of agriculture, the focus is in the production method thrown by nitro oxide (N20), the third most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and Methane.
Stopping emissions will also require production and consume much less beef, so far the most dense carbon of all meat.
There is a need to renovate residential and commercial buildings, which produce many emissions as transportation, and to develop new manufacturing methods for carbon heavy industries such as cement and steel.
Finally, we cannot buy the destruction of a continuous tropical forest of planets, which absorb and store large amounts of CO2.
“It’s a question about choice, there is no path where we don’t make choices,” said Joeri Rogelj, the research director at the Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute.
Options made by individuals, but also on the role of nuclear power, bioenergy, or technology that has not been found to suck CO2 from the air.
More than anything, we need to “leadership with a vision,” Rogelj said.
“The government is very important.”
1.5c is a climate purpose, but how do we get there?
