BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September x, 2020
Last Tuesday. President Xi Jinping, addressing the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, for the first time committed China to a hard target for future greenhouse gas emissions. By 2060, he promised, his country will be carbon neutral (“net zero”). After that, China will put no more carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere than it takes out. Xi also promised that China’s CO2 emissions would actually stop rising by 2030, only 10 years from now. Xi’s promises, while long overdue, nevertheless mean the world will miss the goal of holding the rise in average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Emissions are still rising, and there’s no chance that they will start heading down soon. ~ Gwynne Dyer