Climate: Battle Lines Harden Over How To Slash CO2

Banish fossil fuels, capture their emissions, pull CO2 from thin air -- diplomats in Bonn for UN-led climate talks agree there's too much planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but remain at loggerheads on the best way to reduce it

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 6th Jun, 2023 ) :Banish fossil fuels, capture their emissions, pull CO2 from thin air -- diplomats in Bonn for UN-led climate talks agree there's too much planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but remain at loggerheads on the best way to reduce it.

At stake is nothing less than a liveable world: even if humanity caps global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius -- a huge 'if' -- hundreds of millions will still confront devastating heat, drought, flooding and sea level rise, recent studies have shown.

There are three ways to deal with the problem, intervening at different points in the CO2 "value chain" from source to tailpipe: stop burning fossil fuels, by far the main driver of warming; if you do burn them, stop carbon pollution from seeping into the air; and remove CO2 from the atmosphere once it's there.

"All technologies, all levers available need to be used," Simon Stiell, the head of UN Climate, told as the talks in Bonn opened.

"But the science is very, very clear: the fastest and most effective way of getting us to where we need to is the phasing down and phasing out of all fossil fuels."Politically, an informal "high ambition" coalition including the European Union (especially Germany) and scores of climate-vulnerable developing countries are pushing -- to cite the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) -- to "radically reduce fossil fuels now" through policy, regulatory and economic levers.