After three years of working on a report warning that time is running short to avert climate catastrophe, Greg Nemet is optimistic about the planet’s prospects.
The report calls for rapid transition from fossil fuels to clean energies such as, wind, solar, and electric vehicles, the promotion of plant-driven nutrition, energy savings and financial assistance to developing countries.
Nemet, a professor at the La Follette School of Public Administration at the University of Madison, was one of the lead authors of a report on ways to mitigate climate change released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Nemet, whose research focuses on mechanisms that made solar panels inexpensive, said the report shows that necessary technologies and policies are now achievable.
In fact, almost half of all the greenhouse gases that have been released since 1850 were produced in the last three decades, and despite the rate of growth slowing over the last decade, the emissions emitted between 2010 and 2019 were still the highest ever.
He is also encouraged by the fact that 18 nations, including the United States, have managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the last ten years, even if it has not been sufficient to compensate for increases from elsewhere.
‘If we ‘re going to continue as before, we’ re going to limit warming to less than two degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), let alone 1.5 degrees,’ James Skea of Imperial College London, who co-chairs the report told the Associated Press.
