A report<\/a> released Monday shows that collective global climate action is still falling short of what\u2019s needed to protect Earth\u2019s livable climate. Still, progress has accelerated dramatically in the decade since the Paris Agreement, spurring policies such as investments in renewable energy and public transit that are speeding up the transition away from fossil fuels.<\/p>\n The 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and increase resilience to climate extremes \u201cwas very important to make governments, and mainly the private sector, believe that sooner or later the transition to climate neutrality is really going to happen,\u201d said Emilio La Rovere<\/a>, a professor of energy planning at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who has also worked on the major international climate reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<\/a>.<\/p>\n For countries with emerging economies, such as Brazil, that was a signal to try and combine sustainable economic development with decarbonization, La Rovere said at a press conference for the report\u2019s release. The challenges include political shifts that \u201cjeopardize the continuity of climate policy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also have the challenge ahead of the huge oil and gas resources that Brazil has found,\u201d he added. \u201cYou know, Brazil has joined OPEC+<\/a>, and there is a claim of taking a shortcut to prosperity by accelerating oil and gas production and exports.\u201d<\/p>\n The new report from the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Initiative<\/a> analyzes 21 countries, including the United States. The organization is an international research group established in 2013, with the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations<\/a> and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network<\/a> as lead institutions. It provides robust evidence on what deep decarbonization could look like, specifically how high-emissions countries can develop affordable policies to achieve the cuts needed by 2050. The Paris climate pact called for preventing global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, and preferably keep it below 1.5 degrees.\u00a0<\/p>\n The section on the United States notes that the country\u2019s \u201cwhipsawing\u201d climate policy in the last 10 years \u201chas created major obstacles for the type of rapid energy and economic transition needed to support national and global climate outcomes consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n Alicia Zhao<\/a>, a co-author of the U.S. section of the report and a research manager with the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland\u2019s School of Public Policy, said via email that recent federal climate policy rollbacks in the U.S. have \u201ccreated a lot of uncertainty around the U.S.\u2019s ability to deliver on its climate commitments under Paris.\u201d<\/p>\n
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