July 10th, 2017
A group of climate change experts have published six goals to achieve by 2020 in order to meet the targets set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
In a letter published in the journal Nature, the authors and co-signatories – represented by eminent scientists, business leaders, economists and NGO representatives – declared we must “overcome the risks of climate change” and “act boldly together”.
To meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the experts identified six key goals to be met by 2020:
- Renewable energy should make up 30 per cent of global electricity supply and no coal-fired power plants should be commissioned
- 3 per cent of building and infrastructure stock should come from near-zero or zero-emission buildings each year
- Electric vehicles should make up 15 per cent of total annual car sales. There needs to be a 20 per cent reduction in aviation emissions and 20 per cent increase in efficiency of heavy duty vehicles
- Policies should be enacted to shift land use from deforestation to reforestation and traditional agriculture to sustainable approaches. In doing so these lands would switch from being carbon sources to carbons sinks by 2030
- Carbon-intensive heavy industry should have plans in place to increase efficiency and be on a path to halve emissions by 2050
- $1 trillion dollars should be set aside annually for climate action initiatives
The authors choice of 2020 is significant for two reasons. With current global CO2 emissions of 41 gigatonnes per year, if emissions continue by 2020, then the goals of the Paris Agreement become essentially unattainable.
2020 also marks the year that a country can formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement, as President Trump has already announced that the US will do.
Although the authors recognize that their goals are “idealistic at best [and] unrealistic at worst” and that the “political winds are blustery”, they remain optimistic: “We are in the age of exponential transformation and think that such a focus will unleash ingenuity”.
For the first time in history there is almost unanimous international agreement that the risks associated with climate change are too great to ignore and that we must work urgently and collectively.
In many cases solutions already exist and the transition to low-carbon technology is well under way in many sectors.
The global expansion of wind and solar energy will continue and the global sales of electric vehicles appears to be on the cusp of a rapid global expansion.
The past three years mark the first time that global emissions have stagnated while global GDP has grown, indicating that measures already adopted are beginning to have an effect. Other instances of global emission stagnation or reduction were linked to global economic difficulties.
While the recent G20 summit highlights the political and civil tension that exists at present, one clear positive outcome from the weekend’s meeting was the reaffirmed commitment to the Paris Agreement by the world’s most powerful economies.
The short and long term stance taken by the US undoubtedly places considerable uncertainty around the success of any climate change mitigation measures.
However, in a recent interview, former president of Ireland and UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who was a signatory of the letter, struck a positive note in relation to the US stance:
“What President Trump has done is put climate on the American agenda in a way that it was never there before, and provoked a dynamic response from communities, business, civil society, philanthropy”
Although the G20 summit has further isolated the US, optimists will focus on the continuation of the US renewable energy transition and emissions reduction and a continued commitment by states, cities, companies and citizens despite the best efforts of the current administration.
