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Is the Fight Against Climate Change Losing Momentum? | The New Yorker

Source: Is the Fight Against Climate Change Losing Momentum? | The New Yorker  

Some financial institutions are backing away from emission pledges.
Bill McKibben  April 4, 2024

 

The morally right side doesn’t lose the crucial battles: the arc of the moral universe is long, but it does bend toward justice. We know that lesson too well, which may be a problem, in that it gives us undue confidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that we need to cut carbon emissions by nearly fifty per cent by 2030 in order to have a chance of meeting the targets set in Paris in 2015—and 2030 is five years and nine months away. It’s not impossible. Progress is being made around the world—including in this country, where the provisions of the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act are beginning to kick in, and in China—but as a planet we’re still using more fossil fuel each year. That’s why the signs of backsliding in recent weeks are particularly painful: they come at precisely the moment when we need to be accelerating the transition to renewable power.

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