Climate targets aren’t being met now – it’s not fast enough

As all signs point to this year making history as the hottest ever recorded, a raft of new reports paint a stark picture of how the world’s top industrial nations are responding. There are limited signs of progress in the effort to phase out the greenhouse gas emissions from human activity driving the climate crisis, and many scientists affirm there is still time for governments and corporations to act. But time is quickly running out.

The studies confirm what many climate scientists have been assessing for months: that despite impressive advances in the adoption of renewable energy sources, the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters are lagging far behind their stated climate goals; warming temperatures are accelerating with impacts felt around the globe; and the planet is on track to breach average temperatures at or above 1.5°C, or 2.7°F, annually for the first time.

The Biden administration has released the 5th National Climate Assessment, a sprawling congressionally mandated, peer-reviewed analysis of the latest data about domestic climate trends from 14 federal agencies with over 800 contributing scientists. The analysis found that the United States, the world’s historically biggest emitter of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, only reduced its emissions by less than 1 percent each year from 2005 to 2019.

Added together, the reduction amounts to a 12 percent total cut during that window of time—certainly a positive outcome—but the pace is not nearly enough to meet national and international targets for climate action. The United States’ official goal is to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 from 2005 levels. To achieve that, the nation’s net greenhouse gas emissions would have to drop 6 percent every year from now through 2030, according to the report—a reduction trend for a major polluting nation that has no precedent in the industrial age.