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ARTICLE · 13 APRIL 2022

The Latest IPCC Report — How Are We Doing On Mitigation?

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Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.

United StatesEnvironment
Seth Jaffe
Seth Jaffe
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Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. As all IPCC reports are, it's a serious piece of work and not easily summarized at blog length. Nonetheless, here are some of what seemed to me to be important takeaways:

  • Firstly, and most importantly, we're not doing a very good job at mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. I suspect that, if one asked the average American whether GHG emissions increased or decreased from 2010 to 2019, they would say that emissions decreased. Sadly, that's not the case. GHG emissions in 2019 were 12% higher in 2019 than 2010. The best we can say is that the rate of increase has slowed. (In case you didn't know, that's not good enough!)

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