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10 ways to accelerate progress against climate change

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From pricing carbon to shifting diets, here’s what we need to prioritize now.
From pricing carbon to shifting diets, here’s what we need to prioritize now.
Climate scientists told us late last year in the National Climate Assessment that the United States is already experiencing severe and costly impacts of a changing climate. In a separate United Nations report released in October, scientists reported that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require a gargantuan global effort — and that we have roughly 12 years to do it. But how?
Let’s make something clear: The emissions we need to focus on now are the ones at the industrial, corporate level.
According to the Carbon Majors Database, 71 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 can be traced back to just 100 fossil fuel companies. Hitting the 1.5°C or 2°C goals means these corporations, their customers, and other large enterprises must phase out fossil fuels (more aggressively than what Shell laid out in its vision for a zero-carbon world).
Governments will also have to come up with tax schemes to generate new revenue for investment in and incentives for renewable energy, reforestation, and carbon removal technologies. And we need to vote for leaders who will deliver on them.
The Trump administration is obviously contributing little to these efforts, trying its best to roll back Obama’s suite of climate policies and enable the continuation of fossil fuel dominance. But a growing number of younger leaders around the world understand what’s at stake and are pushing for more ambitious goals, like the ones outlined in the Green New Deal.
Here are some examples of strategies that are working and need to be rolled out worldwide:
By adding a cost to emitting greenhouse gases, you create an incentive to produce less of them and switch to alternatives.
It’s hard to convince someone to pay for something if they can get it for free. Right now, much of the world can dump their greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at no charge. And we don’t have many straightforward ways to value the carbon that trees and algae help pull out of the atmosphere.
Though the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report didn’t explicitly discuss the economics of fighting climate change, the authors highlighted at a press conference that attaching a price tag to greenhouse gases is a critical step in limiting warming. “Carbon pricing and the right economic signals are going to be part of the mix,” said Jim Skea, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III.
Even fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil is campaigning for a carbon tax.
To date, at least 40 countries have priced carbon in some form. Some have done it through a carbon tax. Cap-and-trade schemes for carbon dioxide are also underway, like the European Union’s Emissions Trading System. China now runs the world’s largest carbon trading market. Even some regions in the United States have cap-and-trade schemes, like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative among eastern states.
But, as our colleague David Roberts wrote on Twitter, “A price on carbon of some sort is, wonks almost universally agree, an important part of a comprehensive climate strategy. But the details make all the difference in whether it’s regressive or not, effective or not, popular or not, passable or not.”
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar power have already become dramatically more affordable. In the United States, renewables are cost-competitive with fossil fuels in some markets. In Europe, new unsubsidized renewable energy projects are coming online.
From a market standpoint, it might seem like the time is near for pulling the plug on subsidies to renewables. But if your goal is to fight climate change, it makes more sense to keep giving cleaner energy sources a boost.
The fossil fuel industry is meanwhile still getting a number of direct and indirect subsidies. In the US, these subsidies can amount to $20 billion a year. Globally, it’s about $5.2 trillion per year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Getting rid of government support for these fuels seems like a no-brainer. But yes, the massive political influence of fossil fuels means this will continue to be extremely hard.
The world is still opening tens of thousands of megawatts of coal-fired power capacity every year.
Each of these plants represents decades of further greenhouse gas emissions. Although the rate of new coal power plants is declining, that’s not enough. We still need to shut down the oldest, dirtiest coal power plants and prevent new ones from coming online.
According to the IPCC, to stay on track for climate goals, global coal consumption would have to decline by two-thirds by 2030.
And while natural gas emits about half the greenhouse gases of coal, the quantity isn’t zero, so these generators are in the cross-hairs too.
Some countries are already taking steps to shut off fossil fuel power. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has assembled a panel to figure out when the country can close all of its coal plants. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, has pledged to end its coal use by 2025.
Economists have also argued that countries should use supply-side tactics to restrict the supply of fossil fuels in other ways, too: like opting against new oil and gas pipelines, refineries, and export terminals.

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