The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which releases a new report every few years — again gave grim news last week as emissions rose 2.3% to a record in 2013, marking the largest year-to-year change in three decades.
"We're about at a 3" on a scale of 0 to 10 in reducing emissions that cause global warming, said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geoscientist and contributing author of an international report out earlier this week that warned of "severe, pervasive and irreversible" damage if nations fail to corral greenhouse gases.
Meanwhile, Earth is also on target for its hottest year ever recorded, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as reaching the highest level of atmospheric carbon dioxide in at least 800,000 years. And in the U.S., emissions rose 2.9% in the past year — after several years of declines.
"The pace and scale (of efforts to fight warming) needs to increase dramatically," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global research organization in Washington, D.C. "It is clear that despite all current efforts, much more action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
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Big businesses — including giants such as General Motors, Apple, Pepsi and Kellogg's — are also getting in on the climate change-fighting action. More than half of the Fortune 100 companies have set goals for their own greenhouse-gas reductions, said Anne Kelly, director of the policy program at Ceres, a Boston-based non-profit sustainability group that mobilizes business leadership on climate-change issues.
On top of that, more than 180 companies have come out in favor of regulating carbon dioxide, a move the Environmental Protection Agency proposed earlier this year.
"In all my years of doing this, I've never seen as much support for an EPA goal," Kelly said.
Such backing may be related to the dire news that's come out on global warming in the past several years, and the cost of doing nothing.
"What's encouraging is that a growing number of companies have already reached the same conclusion as the IPCC and are pressing government leaders, especially in Washington, to move more quickly to tackle this issue," said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres.
Read original article at World Losing Battle Against Global Warming - USA Today
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