Biden ’s Climate Summit Made Progress. But We Won’t Reach Net Zero by 2050 Without Those Who Weren’t Invited

The United States convened 40 heads of state in a virtual climate summit this week, with the goal of eliciting commitments from attendees for radical reductions in carbon emissions. The U.S. pledged 50% reduction below 2005 levels by 2030, and others announced their own new targets — with the overall goal of putting the planet on track to carbon neutrality by 2050, the minimum needed to avert catastrophic climate change. But before patting themselves on the back for a job well done, the leaders of those 40 nations, many of them advanced economies, might want to take a look at some of the countries that didn’t make the guest list. Several developing and less stable nations are going in the opposite direction, building fossil-fuel energy infrastructure at this moment that will increase emissions for decades to come. Without their buy-in, the world going net-zero by 2050 is an unattainable goal. And environmentalists and climate finance experts say the wealthiest nations need to be doing more to bring the rest with them. Shifting the burden of emissions Just a few days before the summit, on April 11, the presidents of Uganda and Tanzania, along with the heads of French oil giant Total and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, signed an agreement to start construction on a multi-billion-dollar pipeline project connecting the oil fields of Uganda to the Tanzanian coast some 1,400 km (850 miles) away. When completed in 2025, the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline [E...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change Londontime Source Type: news