What’s really holding the world back from stopping climate change

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The world is on track to shoot far past climate change targets unless countries make drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. Fortunately, many of the tools to make these cuts are already here and are continuing to get cheaper. Yet the pledges to lower emissions that countries have made so far are nowhere near enough, and the world is drifting even further off course.

These are some of the conclusions in the latest report of the United Nations’ independent scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The massive 3,000-page document published Monday is a comprehensive review of the latest science on what it would actually take to mitigate climate change and avoid the most devastating scenarios of warming, and the ensuing chaos.

The report is the third installment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, coming eight years after the last round of research reviews. It zeroes in on a fundamental question: What’s in our power to stop the heat-trapping emissions that come from burning fossil fuels?

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