Why the World Economy Has to Be Carbon Free by 2050

STOCKHOLM — Global warming is a scientific fact as much as the hole in the ozone layer or Earth’s orbit around the sun. Global temperature records have been broken three years running. Arctic Sea ice is declining rapidly. Sea levels are rising. For some societies, such as small island nations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, environmental havoc is not a distant threat. It has arrived.

In front of the financial district of Pudong amid heavy smog in Shanghai in 2015.

To reduce the risk of a global environmental catastrophe, and to avoid reversing the course of human progress, the world must urgently bend the curve of global emissions away from fossil fuels. Global warming must be kept below an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit); beyond that we will face major social and economic consequences.

The math to keep the increase below that critical level doesn’t get much simpler. Emissions must peak no later than 2020, and we must reach a fossil-fuel-free world economy by 2050.

Read the 2017 story from The New York Times by Johann  Rockstrom -  “Why the World Economy Has to Be Carbon Free by 2050.”

The Guardian view on climate change: good news – but not yet good enough

The Montreal protocol is the most successful environmental treaty in history, and arguably one of the most successful of any international pact.

It phased out the gases that were destroying the ozone layer, averting potential catastrophe and healing the hole that human activities had opened in our protective layer. Unfortunately, it had a side-effect overlooked when it was signed in the 1980s: some of the chemicals substituted for the ozone-destroyers had an effect on the climate thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide. This month, world governments agreed to address that by eliminating the substitute chemicals – called HFCs – potentially reducing rising temperatures by as much as 0.5C in a relatively short time. Scientists put the safe limit on future rises at 2C above pre-industrial levels by the middle of this century: beyond that, catastrophic and irreversible climate changes are judged likely. So the reduction agreed under the Montreal protocol could have an enormous, and swift, impact.

Read The Guardian’s editorial about climate change - “The Guardian view on climate change: good news – but not yet good enough.”