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Cutting emissions from transport by up to 90% of current levels is possible by 2050, says Alan Jenn, assistant professional researcher in transportation at the University of California, Davis in the US. “That sort of drastic reduction would require a major, rapid rethinking of how people get around globally.”
You may have noticed the beginning of a shift from internal combustion engine cars which run on fossil fuels. Electric passenger vehicle sales doubled in 2021, making up about 9% of all sales. “Falling costs for renewable energy and electric vehicle batteries, in addition to policy changes, have slowed the growth of climate change in the past decade,” Jenn says.
But, he says, how much “electrifying the transportation system” can “cut greenhouse gas emissions ultimately depends on how clean the electricity grid is. China, for example, is aiming for 20% of its vehicles to be electric by 2025, but its electric grid is still heavily reliant on coal.”
Elsewhere, reducing travel, and commuting in particular, is possible through expanding access to teleworking and videoconferencing. Schemes that allow people to share bikes or scooters “can get more people out of vehicles entirely”, Jenn says. And since 8% of global emissions come from vehicles in urban centres, “efficient city planning” is needed to “help [people] from cars to public transit, [using] strategies that avoid urban sprawl and disincentivize personal cars”.
Landmark scientific reports do not exist in a vacuum, of course. The IPCC analysed studies published before October 2021 to produce its new report. “Since then,” according to Myles Allen, a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford, and Hugh Helferty, a chemist at Queen’s University Ontario in Canada, “wholesale prices of most fossil fuels have more than doubled”.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the unfolding energy crisis could make it easier or harder to stop climate change, depending on how the problem is framed, they say.
“The invasion has highlighted both the dangers of ignoring [the] responsibility [of producers] for fossil fuels, and an opportunity to embrace it. Who are the producers? The vast bulk of fossil carbon dioxide comes from products produced and sold by fewer than 80 companies – all of whom are doing rather well at the moment…
"Until we adopt the principle that anyone producing or selling fossil fuels is responsible for disposal of all the carbon dioxide generated by their activities and products, we aren’t going to stop climate change. And when we do, we will. It really is that simple.”
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