Climate Change Mitigation: Prioritizing Measures

• The annual climate conference in Baku is a crucial event for global action on human-caused global warming.
• Scientific assessments suggest that greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 and decline 43% by 2030.
• Collective commitments to reduce emissions would only lead to a 2.6% decrease by 2030.
• Global emissions have only increased annually, with 53 billion metric tonnes emitted in 2023.
• The only practical solution is for developing countries to grow rich while avoiding fossil-fuel-led pathways.
• The Paris Agreement of 2016 requires countries to decide on a new collective quantified goal (NCQG) before 2025.
• The issue of carbon markets, where rich countries finance counterparts in the developing world for renewable energy generation and carbon-offsetting measures, is a vexing problem.
• Climate negotiations often seem to be arenas of gladiatorial legalese, where the stated goal of reducing emissions seems beyond reach.