Good Morning. World leaders are in Glasgow to talk about preventing climate disasters.
The world has made more progress combating climate change than you may realize.
Greenhouse gas emissions have been falling for about 10 years in the U.S. and Japan, and for even longer in Europe. More recently, they have begun falling in Brazil and Russia. A decade ago, the world was on pace to warm by about 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. Today, the number is closer to 5.5 degrees.
Unfortunately, this progress is still not nearly enough to avoid devastating results, scientists say.
The current scientific consensus is that the world should hold warming to no more than 2.5 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit (or about 1.5 degrees Celsius). Even that will cause substantial damage. But anything more could be catastrophic, with more deadly floods, wildfires and heat waves — as well as destroyed communities, animal extinctions and the potential for geopolitical chaos.
How can the world get from where it is to where it needs to be?
That is the focus of a two-week U.N. conference in Glasgow that began yesterday, including President Biden and other world leaders. (Here’s the latest Times coverage.)
I think it’s helpful to think of the climate solution as having two main parts. They are interconnected, and they’re the subject of today’s newsletter.
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This chart makes clear why the actions of rich countries are so important:
Some high-income countries, including the U.S., remain among the world’s biggest polluters per capita.
COMMENTAIRE: Comparativement a la France, a l’Allemagne, au Japon, a la Chine, Le Canada fait preuve lamentablement de paresse intellectuelle et innovative.
