We must cut the planet’s emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 to align to a 1.5 degrees pathway. A re-invigorated Paris Agreement with the United States at its heart and where governments set more ambitious emissions goals, combined with an accelerated energy transition to renewable energy gives us the opportunity to slow the climate emergency.

Accelerating the energy transition off fossil fuels is fundamental. Re-building the global economy after covid-19 offers developed countries the opportunity to transition to 100% renewable energy faster and developing countries the chance to leapfrog over fossil fuel-driven power. Together, we can fully decarbonize our electricity systems and buildings using solar and wind power; we can help industry recover from this recession with less of a thirst for fossil fuels; and encourage people with the means to buy a vehicle, choose electric. But for the planet to get to 50% decarbonization by 2030 will take more.

Accelerating the energy transition off fossil fuels is fundamental.

Tropical rainforests and land are a critical climate solution that our countries offer to the world, and without which our climate goals will not be possible. Combining an energy transition with our planet’s natural solutions gives us the best shot at aligning to the elusive 1.5 degrees C pathway in time. Rainforests are one of the largest and most cost-effective emission reduction opportunities for the planet. And our coalition represents billions of acres of those rainforests and carbon reductions. From Papua New Guinea to the world’s second largest rainforest in the Congo Basin to central America – our rain forests absorb and store the greenhouse gases that the world emits and stops them from entering the atmosphere to create global warming.

McKinsey & Company

McKinsey offer three scenarios to reaching our climate goals – and all require the curbing of global deforestation immediately.

“Deforestation—quite often linked to agricultural practices, but not exclusively so—is one of the largest carbon-dioxide emitters, accounting for nearly 15 percent of global CO2 emissions. Deforestation’s outsize impact stems from the fact that removing a tree both adds emissions to the atmosphere (most deforestation today involves clearing and burning) and removes that tree’s potential as a carbon sink. Even after accounting for ongoing reforestation efforts, deforestation today claims an area close to the size of Greece every year. Achieving a 1.5-degree pathway would mean dramatically slowing this. By 2030, if all fossil-fuel emissions were rapidly reduced (as in our first scenario), and all sectors of the economy pursued rapid decarbonization, deforestation would still need to fall about 75 percent. In the other two scenarios, where reduced deforestation serves to help counteract slower decarbonization elsewhere, deforestation would need to be nearly halted as early as 2030. Either outcome would require a combination of actions (including regulation, enforcement, and incentives such as opportunity-cost payments to farmers),” McKinsey, 2020