Report Finds 76 Solutions Available Right Now To Slow Down Climate Change

ScienceAlert - Tessa Koumoundouros

Biogas is one of the 76 suggested solutions. (ollo/Getty Images)

We have all the solutions we need to avoid catastrophic warming, right now, claims a new report by Project Drawdown. And, not only are they easy to implement, they're far cheaper than doing nothing.
The Drawdown Review is a comprehensive analysis of the currently available solutions to the climate crisis, based on the work of scientists and researchers around the world, across many sectors, from finance to climate science.
The aim of the nonprofit Project Drawdown is to guide us all towards a future where the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to decline - the moment they refer to as 'drawdown'. That means we must start extracting fossil fuel emissions, such as CO2 and methane, from the atmosphere as well as stop spewing them into it.
"Drawdown is a critical turning point for life on Earth, and we must strive to reach it quickly, safely, and equitably," says the report.
Having already lost an entire decade to inaction, and recently receiving a glimpse of some very frightening consequences - the devastating loss of wildlife from Australia's unprecedented summer of fires - the urgency of such solutions are surely clear.
"The current path we are on is beyond dangerous," the report warns, "and it's easy to be paralyzed by that perilousness. Yet possibility remains to change it."
Project Drawdown estimates that by implementing the 76 solutions they've outlined, it would result in savings of up to around US$144 trillion of avoided climate damage and pollution-related healthcare costs. While the upfront cost could be up to US$26.2 trillion, this plan would allow us to achieve peak carbon dioxide by as early as the mid-2040s.
When they scientists grouped their solutions by sector, they were ranked like this:

1. Energy
2. Food waste, agriculture, land rehabilitation
3. Industry
4. Building efficiency
5. Transport

"We found that when we add together the 80-plus solutions to climate change, and these already exist, we have enough to get drawdown by between the 2040s and the 2060s depending on how decisively we act," co-author and climate scientist Jonathan Foley told the ABC.
The review outlines three key areas: reducing emission sources, protecting and increasing the natural systems that cycle these chemicals, and how to achieve these things while simultaneously improving society.
It of course calls for a rapid shift in how we generate electricity, with 30 percent of the solutions involving increasing efficiency in our energy use and another 30 percent on how to replace fossil fuels.
In what has come to be a heavily debated topic, the report maintains a role for nuclear in a rapid progress towards a carbon-free future.
A recent analysis from Stanford researchers also suggests such a shift is entirely possible with current technology, but unlike Project Drawdown, they believe this can be achieved entirely with renewable energy and do not agree nuclear power is necessary.
Some of Project Drawdown's suggested solutions, like switching to LED lighting and battery storage power, create nearly immediate savings.

Because they are cheaper to install them than simply maintaining the stuff they replace.

— Dr. Jonathan Foley (@GlobalEcoGuy) March 3, 2020

The report highlights the importance of not only preserving but increasing our natural carbon sinks, including protecting ecosystems and changing agricultural practices. Unfortunately though, world leaders from Australia to Brazil are allowing destruction of these vital carbon sinks to continue.
The report acknowledges this aspect, pointing out current commitments for mitigating climate change fall far short of what we need and some aspects are "politically unrealistic" at present. But it offers little analysis on how to counter this beyond a brief mention of "building people" power.
It also notes that other powerful solutions, often overlooked, include reducing food waste and providing women with better education and access to healthcare - which empowers them to have smaller families.
"What these results show is the utmost importance of all solutions implemented in parallel," explained Chad Frischmann, Vice President of Project Drawdown.
"The impacts of these technologies and practices occur only as part of an interconnected, integrated system. It is the implementation of this system of solutions that is the real solution to climate change."
Rather than argue in favour of changing our rampant consumerist culture or curtailing economic growth, they point out money is fuel for change. As such, the researchers favour shifts towards a circular economy and moving capital from the sources of problems to the solutions.
Nevertheless, it is a useful guide for individuals, communities and businesses ready to forge ahead with much needed changes, regardless of the challenges.
The review acknowledges that facing the climate crisis is an overwhelming task, but reminds us it is "also an invitation into deeply meaningful work."
"Business leaders can really step up and lead, not just be followers, not just be pushed by governments, but maybe help shape what regulations could be in the future to take advantage of this new emerging economy," Foley told Fast Company. "The smart businesses are not going to be just dragged kicking and screaming to a climate-safe future. They're going to be leading it."
If enough of us take on this challenge, then perhaps we can still make significant positive progress, despite the powerful institutions still trying to get in our way.
You can read the analysis of all 76 solutions in The Drawdown Review.

Links

• Drawdown Review 2020
• Project Drawdown 2020
• (AU) Science Is Already Being Disrupted By Climate Change, And We're Woefully Unprepared
• Time to quadruple-down on cutting emissions
• Scientists Are Furious Over a Viral Article on How to 'Prepare' For Climate Change
• Fires in Australia Just Pushed Sydney's Air Quality 12 Times Above 'Hazardous' Levels
• 'Project Drawdown' report says we've already got the tech to reach negative emissions by 2040s
• Stanford Researchers Have an Exciting Plan to Tackle The Climate Emergency Worldwide
• There Is One Safe Geoengineering Option Guaranteed to Reduce CO2 in Our Atmosphere
• 'Global deforestation hotspot': 3m hectares of Australian forest to be lost in 15 years
• ExxonMobil Misled The Public on Climate Change For 40 Years, New Study Shows

Guest Post: World’s Intact Tropical Forests Reached ‘Peak Carbon Uptake’ In 1990s

Carbon Brief - Simon Lewis

Amazon forest canopy at dawn, Brazil. Credit: Dr Peter Vander Sleen.

Simon Lewis Prof Simon Lewis is a researcher of global change science at the University of Leeds and University College London and is a contributing editor for Carbon Brief.

The world’s land surface currently removes around 30% of all human-generated CO2 emissions, with tropical forests playing a major role in this “carbon sink”.
Of particular importance are intact tropical forests, which, according to a landmark paper published in 2011, absorbed 15% of all human-generated CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2007.
This research found that intact tropical forests that are undisturbed by either logging or fires were, on average, getting larger over time – thought to be driven by rising atmospheric CO2 levels boosting photosynthesis.
However, new research published this week in Nature, by myself and colleagues, paints a much more alarming picture of the role of tropical forests in slowing climate change.
Utilising two large forest datasets in Africa and South America spanning 300,000 trees, we show that the carbon sink in tropical forest is in rapid decline.
In fact, according to our analysis, the ability of intact tropical forests to remove CO2 from the atmosphere reached its peak in the 1990s and has since been in decline.

Tropical turmoil
Forests act as a net carbon sink when the amount of carbon gained through tree growth and the establishment of new trees is larger than the amount lost through tree mortality.
To evaluate how the sink is evolving over time, we made use of tree data stretching back 30 years. Every few years in the study period, research teams measured every tree in 565 patches of intact forest across the Amazon, the Congo Basin and West Africa.

Measuring trees in Lope National Park, Gabon (left) and in the Peruvian Amazon (right). Credit: Prof Simon Lewis (left) and Dr Roel Brienen (right)

The results show that, in the 1990s, the average undisturbed tropical forest removed 0.57 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year from the atmosphere. But this figure declined to an estimated 0.38 tonnes of carbon by the 2010s.
This is a one-third reduction in the carbon sink strength of intact tropical forests in just two decades.
If we extrapolate our results to consider all of the planet’s remaining intact tropical forests, we find that carbon uptake peaked at 1.26bn tonnes of carbon per year in the 1990s. This figure represents around 17% of all human-generated CO2 emissions at that time.
By the 2010s, the global uptake ability of tropical forests declined to 0.68bn tonnes of carbon per year. This is equivalent to just 6% of human-caused CO2 emissions in the 2010s.
It is worth noting that, over the study period, both the per unit area sink strength declined by 33% and the area of intact tropical forest declined by 19%, which also reduced the total rate of carbon uptake.
Tropical forests are still an important carbon sink. However, according to our results, the feared sink-to-source transition of one on Earth’s major carbon sinks has begun. This is decades earlier than any climate-driven vegetation model has predicted.

Dying trees
To understand why the carbon sink is decreasing, we analysed various factors that could be affecting tree growth and death.
Models typically predict that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere will boost plant growth. This is because plants use CO2 during photosynthesis, the process needed to fix carbon to grow trunks, branches, roots and leaves. The impact of rising CO2 levels on plant growth is known as the “CO2 fertilisation effect”.
Our analysis shows, for the first time using inventory data, that across Africa and the Amazon, more CO2 in the atmosphere is boosting forest growth and this effect is not diminishing over time – just as models predicted.
However, despite the CO2 fertilisation effect, the sink is in decline.
This is because of the climate impacts of rising CO2 levels. Namely, higher temperatures and stronger drought conditions are slowing plant growth – and killing trees.
Overall, our analysis reveals that the balance of the ongoing positive impact of CO2 on photosynthesis and the increasingly negative impacts of temperature and drought is progressively moving in the direction of shutting down the sink over time.
Another factor playing a role is the life history of trees. Dynamic forests where trees die younger see their carbon sink saturating sooner than less dynamic forests, which tend to be dominated by very large trees.

Africa vs Amazonia
As part of our analysis, we looked at how the rate of carbon uptake differs between the world’s two largest areas of intact tropical forest: the Amazon region and in equatorial Africa.
Our results show that the Amazon sink started declining first, starting in the 1990s, followed by Africa, where we see a sink decline in the best-monitored plots beginning about 2010.
Amazon forests are declining earlier and faster than African forests because of three groups of factors.
First, trees in Amazonia tend to be more dynamic than those in Africa, with trees dying at a higher rate, meaning that past gains growth leave the system sooner resulting in an earlier saturating sink.
Second, the Amazon tends to experience higher temperatures because it is closer to sea level, faster temperature rises, and more frequent and severe droughts than African forests have experienced over recent decades.
Third, Amazon forest species appear less resistant to droughts than African forests. This may be because of the long-term climate history of African forests. The region has weathered large range contractions in glacial periods of Earth’s history, leaving more adaptable species that have survived past episodes of rapid environmental change.
Overall, African forests are more robust to recent contemporary environmental change than Amazon forests, our analysis suggests. While African forests cover much less area than Amazon forests, for the period 2000-10, the carbon sink was the same on both continents.

Forest forecast
For the final part of our study, we used the knowledge gleaned from our datasets to construct statistical models for forecasting changes to future tropical forest carbon uptake.
Using future CO2, temperature and rainfall estimates alongside our models, we predict that, on average, the per unit area carbon sink in African forest will be 14% smaller by 2030 compared to 2010-15 levels, while the average Amazon forest sink will reach zero by 2035.
Parts of the intact Amazon that are affected by drought could turn from a carbon sink to a carbon source, according to our analysis. This will be because carbon losses from tree mortality overtake carbon gains from growth.
Overall, we predict a sink-to-source transition of one of Earth’s major carbon sinks, with the Amazonia sink saturating first, followed later by the African sink.
The chart below shows how the ability of African forests (blue) and Amazonian forests (red) to uptake carbon is projected to change by 2040, calculated using our measurement-based statistical models.
(The chart also shows how our measurement-based assessment of carbon uptake in Amazonian and African forests from 1990 to present compares with projections from statistical models, which are shown in light blue for Africa and pink for Amazonia.)

Estimates and projections of tropical carbon sinks. The study’s measurement-based estimates of carbon uptake in Amazonia and Africa are shown in red and blue, respectively. Light blue and pink show projections from statistical models. Source: Rammig et al. (2020) Data source: Hubau et al. (2020)

Policy implications
Our findings highlight several key messages for policymakers. First, on-the-ground tropical forest monitoring programs need funding, as the changes we predict are subtle and cannot be deduced from satellite data alone.
Second, tropical forests matter. For now, they are still a carbon sink and will always be a large store of carbon. Forests’ resistance to climate change is relatively high if left undisturbed. Controlling logging and fires is essential.
Third, the need to reduce emissions to net zero just got more urgent. If society leaves it too late to tackle emissions, nature will make the job of controlling climate change much more difficult.
Finally, avoiding a transition to a carbon source will require stabilising the climate by reaching net-zero emissions. If tropical forests sequester less carbon than models predict, an earlier date by which to reach net zero will be required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Links

• A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests
• Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests
• Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Will Hit Yet Another Record High This Year, Experts Project
• Earth's Rocks Can Absorb A Shocking Amount Of Carbon: Here’s How
• If Each Of Us Planted A Tree, Would It Slow Global Warming?
• Australia's Carbon Emissions Continue To Rise Despite Government Assurances About Climate Change Policy
• Tiny Nations Challenge Australia's Carbon 'Carryover Credits'
• Capturing Carbon To Fight Climate Change Is Dividing Environmentalists

(AU) Scientists Warn Of 'Critical Gaps' In Australia's Climate Science Capability

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Exclusive: Australia needs the expertise to predict changes which have a major impact across the country, a review finds

Cattle on a drought-affected property in NSW. There are gaps in Australia’s ability to understand the processes that underpin climate change, scientists say. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters 

A government-backed review of Australia’s climate science capability has identified “critical gaps” in the nation’s ability to understand the processes that underpin climate change, with atmospheric modelling lagging other countries.
It found Australia was in danger of losing “critical expertise” needed to predict changes in major climate patterns, such as El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, that have a major impact across the continent.
On atmospheric modelling, it found research had fallen “well behind those that lead the world”, partly because of a “lack of computational power and data storage”.
The report, seen by Guardian Australia and expected to be released this week, was requested by the government-appointed National Climate Science Advisory Committee to help develop a strategy in the area.
It was co-ordinated by the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (Clex), and finalised after a workshop and survey of researchers at academic institutions and government agencies.
The report focused on research into “climate processes”, which cover issues including the behaviour of clouds and how air moves in the atmosphere, and the dynamics of oceans and ice-covered regions.
It concluded the research effort across Australia was substantial, including a “very strong, world-leading effort” in observing the oceans. But while the country had a good foundation of research, coordination was lacking.
The survey found there were 466 full-time equivalent staff and students dedicated to investigating climate processes, but there was a “sub-critical mass” of research into aspects of atmospheric physics that were integral to phenomena like heatwaves and the cycle of El Niño and La Nina, a natural cycle that can have major influence on Australian rainfall and heat.
The report said: “The loss of expertise in these areas represents a critical threat to Australia’s ability to understand and predict such phenomena into the future. The shortage of expertise in these areas requires urgent correction.”
It said there was also evidence efforts to develop climate models were “approaching critical thresholds of under-resourcing and capacity limits”. While Australia was putting a “significant effort” into understanding the processes of the cryosphere – parts of the planet covered in ice – the efforts were fragmented.
In a summary, the report says: “The report concludes that a transformation of climate processes research into a community working collectively towards national goals in a common science framework is essential.
“Given the underpinning role of processes research for all other climate research this transformation provides the foundation for providing solutions to the climate-related societal challenges ahead.”
To combat the issues, the report suggested a “community-wide research network” be created, and short-term “accelerator institutes” funded to tackle key knowledge gaps.
In 2017, the Australian Academy of Science issued a report into Australia’s climate science capability that also identified risks. It said the team developing Australia’s weather and modelling system – Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator (Access) – was a “small fraction of the size of groups building equivalent models for their regions in other countries”.
The report was requested by the National Climate Science Advisory Committee, which itself issued a report in June 2019 that was not made publicly available until 19 December 2019.
A Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment spokesman said the report was commissioned by the environment minister, Sussan Ley, and the science minister, Karen Andrews, after they received recommendations from the National Climate Science Advisory Committee.
He said it would “help ensure the government’s climate science activities are better coordinated and prioritised to maintain and strengthen Australia’s climate research capability”.
“The government is committed to climate science investment and is progressing the establishment of an enhanced climate science advisory group that will build on the work of the National Climate Science Advisory Committee to ensure that Australian decision makers have continued access to world class scientific information,” the spokesman said.

Links

• Australia's summer of 2019-20 country's second-hottest on record
• Morrison government to stop funding international collaboration on shift to zero emissions
• Calls to declare koalas endangered as population declines by two-thirds in 20 years
• Smoke screen: how Australia's biggest polluters have been free to increase emissions
• Great Barrier Reef could face 'most extensive coral bleaching ever', scientists say

(AU) Australia Headed For A Bushfire Scenario ‘We Cannot Even Fathom’ As Climate Change Ramps Up

NEWS.com.au - Charis Chang

Australia is headed for an 800 per cent increase to its bushfire risk and one expert says the scenario is “something we cannot even fathom”.

NSW Rural Fire Service crews fight the Gospers Mountain Fire at Bilpin on December 21. Picture: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Australia is facing a scenario “we cannot even fathom” as temperature rises look set to increase the probability of bushfires by up to 800 per cent.
One of the architects of the Paris Climate Agreement has warned that bushfires in Australia could become 400 to 800 per cent more likely if the country warms by 2 degrees.
Australia has already warmed by about 1.4 degrees, much higher than the world average of 1.1 degrees. This is partly because land warms up faster than the ocean.
This month a World Weather Attribution study found climate change had increased the chances of devastating bushfires in Australia by at least 30 per cent.
“That same study says if (we) go to 2 degrees global – which would be 2.5C or more in Australia – it would actually make those bushfires 400 to 800 per cent more probable,” Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) told ABC’s RN Breakfast on Tuesday.
“That is just something that we cannot even fathom.”
Even more alarming is that the world is headed for much higher warming than 2 degrees.
“I wish we were heading for 2 (degrees), that would be good news,” Ms Figueres said.
“The fact is that if every single government meets what they registered under the Paris Agreement five years ago, and then does no more than that … and makes no further efforts, then we would be heading for 3.7 degrees, which is a world that is basically uninhabitable for human beings.”
Ms Figueres said the bushfires this year were a line in the sand and “to have that future pulled into the present was actually horrifying”. It also highlighted that Australia was one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change impacts.
“Yes, Australia is responsible for only 1.3 per cent of emissions, however as we have seen from the bushfires, Australia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change,” she said.
“It cannot solve climate change on its own, it needs the solidarity of most, if not all, of the other countries.
“And if Australia does not contribute to the solution, there’s no way it can ask other countries to contribute to the solution.”

People caught up in the bushfires at Malua Bay, gather on the beach. Picture: Al Baxter

Australia has committed to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 per cent reduction on 2005 greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2030.
But Ms Figueres said emissions needed to be halved within the next 10 years to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.
“Every single scientific study shows that we have to peak global emissions this year and then start a marked descent,” she said.
“It sounds very, very steep but actually it’s completely doable.”
This month Bureau of Meteorology head of climate monitoring Karl Braganza said Australia had warmed by about 1.4 degrees Celsius while the rest of the world had increased by 1.1C.
“Australia warms slightly more than the global average,” Dr Braganza told a Senate estimates committee in Canberra on Monday.
When temperatures across the rest of the world increase by 3.4C on average – which was estimated in a recent report – Australia is projected to be closer to 4C, he said.
It comes as BOM confirms the recent summer was Australia’s second hottest on record.
The national mean temperature for summer was 1.88C warmer than average, while the maximum was 2.11C higher and the minimum 1.64C more than average.
Australia’s 2019/20 bushfires burned more than 11 million hectares – an area larger than Ireland or South Korea – destroyed nearly 6000 buildings and killed at least 34 people and an estimated 1.5 billion animals.

Erricson Sky crane fills up from a lake near Bairnsdale, at the height of the Gippsland fires in late December. Picture: Michael Douthat

Finn Burns escapes the fires in a boat on Mallacoota lake in one of the most iconic images of the devastating bushfire season. Picture: ABC Gippsland

Links

• The myths around Australia’s horror bushfire season
• Places in Australia where people will soon struggle to live
• The science behind climate change and its link to bushfires
• Photos of Australia’s horrific bushfire season
• How long will Australia be liveable?
• Study shows climate change link to devastating 2019/20 Australian bushfire season

(AU) More Drought In Australia's Future As Weather Patterns Change

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

The Indian Ocean weather pattern that contributed to eastern Australia's intense drought and bushfires is becoming more common because of climate change - and can reach worse extremes.
Using coral cores drawn from Indonesian islands, an international research team led by Australians reconstructed climatic conditions in the Indian Ocean over more than 500 years. Of particular interest was a phenomenon known as the positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).

Sheep on the parched lake floor of the Burrendong Dam. The reservoir, one of the largest in the Murray Darling Basin, was down to about 1 per cent full during the worst of the recent drought. Credit: Nick Moir

During the positive phase of the IOD, waters off Indonesia are cool relative to the western Indian Ocean. That pattern typically means spring rainfall shifts westwards, increasing the odds of heavy rain in eastern Africa but also unusually dry and hot weather in south-eastern Australia.
While 1997 and 2019 recorded extreme positive IODs, both were dwarfed by one in 1675 that was as much as 42 per cent stronger than these, according to results published in Nature journal on Tuesday.

Source: NOAA Climate

Source: Nature

"Historically, strong events like the one we saw in 2019 have been very rare," said Nerilie Abram, an Australian National University professor and lead author of the paper. "Over the reconstruction beginning in the year 1240, we see only 10 of these events, but four of those have occurred in just the last 60 years."
Professor Abram said human-caused climate change was upping the odds of these extreme events because the western part of the Indian Ocean was warming faster than the east. "That puts the Indian Ocean in a state where it's possible to generate more of these positive [IOD] events," she told the Herald and The Age.
While it is not clear what impact the 1675 pattern had on Australian rainfall, other impacts typical of a big event show up in historical records, such as drought in Indonesia and the failure of rice crops in Thailand and India, Professor Abram said.
Cai Wenju, a senior CSIRO researcher who has published extensively on the Indian Ocean climate, said the new research "gives us a very rich historical perspective of how IODs have been changing with time".
Dr Cai said the 1675 event was "humungous" and showed what nature was capable of generating even before man-made global heating began raising background temperatures.
"In the future, climate change will be producing more frequent and huge positive IODs," he said. "It spells big impacts" on places such as Australia.
The paper, which included researchers from the US, Indonesia, Taiwan and China, also showed how the Indian Ocean often moved in tandem with the Pacific Ocean. The positive phase of the IOD, for instance, was often coupled with El Ninos in the Pacific.
“Our research indicates that while Indian Ocean Dipole and El Nino events can occur independently, periods of large year-to-year swings in Indian Ocean variability also had heightened [El Nino Southern Oscillation] variability in the Pacific,” said Matt England from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW.
With climate change, extreme positive IODs and El Ninos "will both go up together" in intensity and frequency, Dr Cai said.
The 1997-98 combination of an extreme positive IOD followed by extreme El Nino and La Nina events in the Pacific is about a one-in-200 year event, he said.
The combination will become more like a one-in-45 year event before 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at the current pace.

Links

• Nature: Coupling of Indo-Pacific climate variability over the last millennium
• The culprit behind east Australia's big dry
• El Nino events to become 'stronger' and more intense, study finds
• Indian Ocean reveals future climate risks
• Humans have caused climate change for 180 years
• Explainer: what are the underlying causes of Australia's shocking bushfire season?

Emissions: World Has Four Times The Work Or One-Third Of The Time

Nature - Niklas Höhne, Michel den Elzen | Joeri Rogelj | Bert Metz | Taryn Fransen | Takeshi Kuramochi | Anne Olhoff | Joseph Alcamo | Harald Winkler | Sha Fu | Michiel Schaeffer | Roberto Schaeffer | Glen P. Peters | Simon Maxwell | Navroz K. Dubash

Women carry coal from an open-cast mine in Jharkand state in India. Credit: Kuni Takahashi/Getty

The past decade of political failure on climate change has cost us all dear. It has shrunk the time left for action by two-thirds. In 2010, the world thought it had 30 years to halve global emissions of greenhouse gases. Today, we know that this must happen in ten years to minimize the effects of climate change. Incremental shifts that might once have been sufficient are no longer enough.

The further bad news is that, even taken together, the proposed climate action by all countries is a long way from meeting this requirement. Rather than halving emissions by 2030, countries’ climate proposals will lead to a slight increase. Worse still, individual countries are not on track to achieve commitments that were insufficient from the outset and are now woefully inadequate.

The better news is that more countries, regions, cities and businesses are implementing the deep, rapid transformations that are urgently required. At scale, these could achieve the collective climate goals that nations agreed in Paris more than four years ago. There are lessons to be learnt from places such as Costa Rica, Shenzhen in China and Copenhagen that have made strides through the use of renewable energy and electrified transport. The United Kingdom (together with 75 other parties) and California have at least set ambitious goals to become carbon neutral, which might send signals to industry even before supporting policies are implemented. Meanwhile, 26 banks have stopped directly financing new coal-fired power plants (see go.nature.com/32uped2).

Much is happening on the ground. The question is how to ramp up these activities fast enough to keep warming to less than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

Here we present a snapshot of the extent to which nations’ individual pledges are inconsistent with their stated collective goals. We also note some of the pockets of promise. We draw our conclusions from a synthesis of all ten editions of the Emissions Gap Report produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)^1–5. Each year for the past decade, this report has examined the difference between what countries have pledged to do individually to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and what they need to do collectively to meet agreed temperature goals — the ‘gap’.

Our analysis shows that the gap has widened by as much as four times since 2010. There are three reasons for this. First, global annual greenhouse-gas emissions increased by 14% between 2008 and 2018⁶. This means that emissions now have to decline faster than was previously estimated, because it is cumulative emissions that determine the long-term temperature increase. Second, the international community now agrees that it must ensure a lower global temperature rise than it decided ten years ago, because climate risks are better understood. And third, countries’ new climate pledges have been insufficient.

The tenth anniversary of the report coincides with the 2020 milestone to which countries agreed in Paris. They undertook to communicate or update climate pledges, or ‘nationally determined contributions’, to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference (COP26) this November in Glasgow, UK. Clearly, the promises must be overhauled — and then, crucially, kept — if the yawning gap between ‘talk and walk’ is going to close by 2030.

Electric taxis at a charging station in Shenzhen, China. Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty

Gap minder
The scope of the UNEP emissions gap reports has evolved over time, in line with climate policy. So what has changed during the past decade?

In the 2009 Copenhagen accord⁷ and the 2010 Cancun agreement⁸, countries collectively pledged to limit warming to below 2 °C, and 73 countries individually pledged emissions targets for 2020. The 2015 Paris agreement, responding to mounting concern over the impacts of climate change, tightened the collective temperature limit to “well below 2 °C” and agreed “to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C”⁹. Under the Paris deal, 192 parties individually pledged emissions targets, typically for 2030 (see ‘More and faster’).

Sources: Historical emissions: ref. 6; 2010 pledges and pathways: ref. 1; 2015 pledges and pathways: ref. 2.

From 2010 to 2014, the gap reports projected the likely difference in 2020 between the expected result of countries’ pledges and the pathways towards 2 °C. The 2010 report documented a shortfall of 14%. Since 2015, the reports have forecast the expected shortfall in 2030 between the countries’ pledges and progress towards both 1.5 °C (current shortfall of 55%) and 2 °C (current shortfall of 25%; see ‘More and faster’). The report also examines the policies that countries are implementing domestically.

Had serious climate action begun in 2010, the cuts required to meet the emissions levels for 2 °C would have been around 2% per year, on average, up to 2030. Instead, emissions increased. Consequently, the required cuts from 2020 are now more than 7% per year on average for 1.5 °C (close to 3% for 2 °C).

The time window for halving global emissions has also narrowed drastically. In 2010, it was 30 years; today, it is 10 years for 1.5 °C (25 years for 2 °C). Although many reports, scientists and policymakers continue to discuss rises of 2 °C, it must be emphasized that, in 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that warming of more than 1.5 °C would be disastrous¹⁰.

Countries are not even on track to achieve their now plainly inadequate 2015 pledges. Of the G20 countries, seven (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, South Korea, South Africa and the United States) need to implement existing policy or roll out new measures. (The United States has begun the process of withdrawing from the Paris agreement, and will leave in November.) Russia and Turkey have set themselves unambitious targets that they can meet without new policies.

Since 2015, estimated global emissions in 2030 have decreased by only 3%. For the leading seven emitters, 2030 estimates have slightly decreased, flatlined or increased (see ‘The seven top emitters’).

Comparison of the 2015 and 2019 UNEP Emissions Gap Report^2,20 and other sources^21–25 provides information about changes in current policy projections for the leading emitters. Uncertainties for each estimate are large. See Supplementary Information for details.

No single model can predict the future, and such analyses by necessity exclude the most recent developments. Nevertheless, it is clear that, collectively, current policies will not limit global warming to well below 2 °C, let alone 1.5 °C, as agreed in Paris.

Clearly, the annual audit of the emissions gap has not altered poor performance. The gap concept has nonetheless proved useful. The reports and numbers have continuously informed the UN climate summits¹¹ and the emissions gap was noted as a serious concern when parties were adopting the Paris agreement⁹.

Transformative action
Fundamental policy transformations have begun to appear in some sectors, countries, regions, cities and businesses over the past ten years. These innovations seek to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including climate ones. Slashing emissions now requires ‘leaving no one behind’.

To recognize, monitor and understand these advances, the gap reports have included examples. Some are discussed here.

Ambitious action
Most encouragingly, a wealth of agile nations, regions, cities and businesses have promised or made radical changes since the Paris agreement (see ‘Action gap’ and Supplementary Information. See also go.nature.com/2t22tth). At the last count, net-zero emissions goals have been set or are being considered by 76 countries or regions (the European Union is the largest) and 14 sub-national regions or states (the largest being California); some locations have begun implementation. Together, these places account for about 21% of global greenhouse-gas emissions^12,13.

Sources: 2017 emissions: refs 12,13; 2017 Energy production: ref. 14.

Fifty-three countries and 31 states and regions have explicitly committed to an emissions-free electricity sector. Seven additional countries have done so implicitly by aiming for net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions. Together, these account for around 18% of global electricity generation¹⁴. Twenty-one countries, 5 regions and more than 52 cities have committed to make all vehicles emissions-free. Individual examples also exist for sectors in which reaching zero emissions was thought to be difficult, such as heavy industry and aviation. Steel giants ThyssenKrupp in Essen, Germany, and SSAB in Stockholm are aiming for zero-emissions steel production by 2050 and 2045, respectively. The building-materials company Heidelberg Cement, headquartered in Germany, is aiming for zero-emissions cement production by 2050. For aviation, Norway and Scotland hope to make short-haul and domestic flights zero emissions by 2040.

Renewables
Costs of renewable energy are falling faster than expected¹⁵. Renewables are currently the cheapest source of new power generation in most of the world. Solar and wind power will be financially more competitive than will existing coal plants by next year¹⁵. These cost declines, and those of battery storage, are opening up possibilities for large-scale, low-carbon electrification.

Coal consumption
The rise of renewable energy can – must – facilitate a move away from coal. Emerging economies that depend on coal, such as China and India, have begun to address consumption by adjusting the fuel’s price, capping its consumption, reducing plans for new coal-fired power plants and supporting renewables. Much more must be done, and quickly — while addressing poverty, energy access and urbanization^16–18.

UN SDGs
Actions to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are essential for achieving food security, healthy lives and many other SDGs, as confirmed by a growing body of research^10,19. For example, renewable energy cuts air pollution, and improves health and energy security compared with fossil fuels.

Closing the gap
These few success stories must be scaled up and mirrored with progress in every sector. The fact that reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions are a prerequisite to achieving sustainable development must propel action.

The gap is so huge that governments, the private sector and communities need to switch into crisis mode, make their climate pledges more ambitious and focus on early and aggressive action. Otherwise, the Paris agreement’s long-term goals are out of reach. We do not have another ten years.

Links

• Not slashing emissions? See you in court
• Paris Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C
• Oil And Gas May Be A Far Bigger Climate Threat Than We Knew
• (AU) Australia Will Take New Emissions Reduction Target To Glasgow Climate Summit
• Denmark Floats A Possible Model For Climate Policy
• The Year In Climate Change: Leaders Keep Ignoring The Science, And This Is Not Fine

Reporter’s Toolbox: New Resources Help Improve Climate Coverage

Society of Environmental Journalists - Susan Joy Hassol

Jeremy Hoffman, chief scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia, shows journalists sea surface temperature data at an October 2019 climate workshop hosted by Climate Matters in the Newsroom, the Science Museum of Virginia and three Virginia universities. Photo: Courtesy Science Museum of Virginia.

Susan Joy Hassol Susan Joy Hassol is the director of Climate Communication and has led the training of 400 journalists on climate issues. She was the writer of the first three U.S. National Climate Assessments and an HBO documentary, “Too Hot Not To Handle.” Susan has testified before the U.S. Senate, and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Climate change, once considered a problem for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. Its impacts are affecting us here and now.
Americans are increasingly concerned and want to hear more about it in their news. A Yale and George Mason University survey reveals that 69 percent of Americans are worried about global warming, a dramatic 16 percent increase over the past five years.
But while they are increasingly concerned about it, two-thirds of Americans say they only hear about it in the media once a month or less.
Equally problematic to the paucity of climate reporting is how most climate stories are framed — as a political, scientific or environmental issue, rather than as a threat to our health, safety, security, food, water, energy and more.
Nor is there much coverage of solutions — of what people are doing about climate change. There is also a general failure among network television and local news outlets to connect extreme weather events to human-caused climate change, according to analyses by Media Matters for America and Public Citizen.
While heatwaves, wildfires and hurricanes receive a great deal of coverage, very little of that coverage makes the linkages to climate change clear.

Climate reporting picks up steam
But a new day is dawning in climate journalism.
TV networks and newspapers are establishing more regular coverage and some are building their climate teams. An initiative led by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation called Covering Climate Now includes hundreds of media outlets worldwide, with a combined audience of more than a billion people.

As climate reporting is picking up steam, excellent new resources are available to journalists who are tackling the greatest story of our time.

 As climate reporting is picking up steam, excellent new resources are available to journalists who are tackling the greatest story of our time. 
Climate Matters in the Newsroom, supported by the National Science Foundation, for instance, provides free, weekly, localized climate reporting resources in English and Spanish, delivered directly to your inbox. These include broadcast-ready graphics and story ideas you can make your own by adding local context.
You can also search the media library of past story packages and graphics by topics and keywords for your media market and sign up to receive them weekly.
The Climate Matters in the Newsroom team also offers workshops for journalists at professional society meetings — including at Society of Environmental Journalists’ conferences in 2018 and 2019 — as well as with university partners in the Southeast United States. The workshops feature experts in climate science and solutions as well as journalists doing exemplary local climate reporting.

Avoid scientific jargon
A popular session in these workshops involves language tips for those covering climate, based on my three decades of experience in this arena.

David Boraks of WFAE in Charlotte, N.C., at center, talks with fellow journalists as they practice using new resources to tell local climate stories at a September 2019 climate reporting workshop. Photo: Courtesy Climate Matters

For example, I remind journalists to avoid adopting scientists’ jargon in their reporting. For instance, don’t say “anthropogenic,” say “human-caused.” Avoid “spatial” and “temporal;” instead use “space” and “time.”
I also stress that some words mean different things to scientists than they do to the public. For example, “aerosol” means “spray can” to the public, while scientists use it to refer to tiny atmospheric particles. Scientists use the term “enhance” to mean “increase,” while to the public, it means to improve (so the “enhanced greenhouse effect” sounds like a good thing).
And when scientists describe a vicious cycle in the climate system, whereby warming causes more warming, they use the term “positive feedback,” which to the public sounds like a good thing, as does anything associated with the word “positive.”
For more on the language of climate change, see my TEDx talk, articles in Eos and Physics Today, and my piece on communicating the linkages between extreme weather events called (Un)Natural Disasters, in the World Meteorological Organization Bulletin.

Connect the dots
Another great new resource helps journalists connect the dots between extreme weather events and climate change. These “Quick Facts for Any Story,” created by Climate Communication and SciLine, summarize the latest science on the linkages between climate change and heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires, and torrential rain and flooding.
Each “Quick Facts” begins with a top-line message that can be used in any story to make a scientifically supported connection between extreme weather events and global warming. Each also includes a list of key facts on the linkages with references to peer-reviewed studies, pitfalls to avoid and experts you can contact for quotes.
More of these are coming soon. And SciLine connects journalists with credible, articulate scientific experts on any topic, on deadline, for free.
Reporters are also commonly faced with oft-repeated myths about climate change, and Skeptical Science is a great resource for debunking them. The website provides both basic and intermediate rebuttals to all the most common talking points of those who reject the science of global warming.
And finally, my Climate Communication website offers a highly selective collection of resources including other websites, articles, reports and videos. Some of my favorites include Energy Innovation, Project Drawdown, Climate Interactive and the Yale Climate Opinion Maps.
Journalists have a great opportunity to report creatively on climate change. The public is particularly hungry to hear more about solutions to the climate crisis, including the policies and technologies that work to reduce climate-warming emissions and draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Reporters can find timely and accessible information at the resources above to enhance their ability to tell personal, local climate stories that matter to their audiences.

Links

• Society of Environmental Journalists
• Society of Environmental Journalists: Climate Change
• Society of Environmental Journalists: Journalism & Media
• Society of Environmental Journalists: Science
• Scientific Skepticism: Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
• Climate Communication
• Climate Communication: Resources
• Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology
• Project Drawdown
• Yale Climate Change Communication