LONDON: 2014 is going to end as the warmest year on record so now the world enters 2015. The big question on climate scientists’ minds is whether the alarming trends will finally prompt action on the part of world leaders.
So far, the world’s biggest polluters, U.S. and China, have pledged to do their part to cut back on carbon emissions. Scientists will be watching closely to see if some real solutions will be put forward by them in 2015, or if there still will be bickering over who shoulders the burden, according to an NBC News report.
However, there is room for hope in the lead-up to a climate summit in Paris next December. Jonathan Overpeck, director of the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment — who also served as a co-author of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report — said momentum has already begun, with some “real breakthroughs that signal hope,” according to the report.
For instance, China and the United States have acknowledged their roles in creating the problem and recognize that will need to make some drastic changes, he said.
U.S. President Barack Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping announced a joint pledge to reduce carbon emissions in the coming years. This was followed by international talks in Peru that may serve as a warm-up to get nations on board with making a serious effort at curbing carbon emissions that are heating up the planet and putting the world at risk of disastrous flooding, droughts, storms, famines, and other problems.
What will need to happen in 2015, experts believe, is for building on the agreement between the U.S. and China, and that means real, concrete commitments, rather than non-binding resolutions. Republicans are using the non-binding status of the agreement to criticize the deal as a whole, arguing that it would force the U.S. to make changes while China could do nothing.
If world leaders don’t take steps now, the urgency of climate changes themselves may force action. Land and sea temperatures between January and November this year were the warmest such period in 135 years of record-keeping, an increase of 1.22 degrees over the average.
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