COP24: a recipe for disaster?

As delegates from around the world met in Katowice, Poland at the COP 24 Climate Summit, it’s clear that renewable energy is getting cheaper and being adopted faster than ever before. However, emissions continue to rise as investors keep pouring money into coal and other fossil fuels. L. Michael Buchsbaum takes a look. Ahead of the conference, several studies were published that suggested global emissions were still on track to rise for a second year in a row. The Global Carbon Project’s report, titled “Global Energy Growth Is Outpacing Decarbonization,” appeared on Dec. 5 in the peer-reviewed Environmental Research Letters. More detailed data was published simultaneously in Earth System Science Data. Led by Stanford University scientist Rob Jackson, it estimates that global carbon dioxide emissions, mainly from fossil fuel sources, will reach a record high of just over 37 billion tons in 2018, an increase of 2.7 percent over emissions output in 2017. That compares to 1.6 percent growth a year earlier. Moreover, emissions from non-fossil sources, such as deforestation, are projected to add another …