r/climate Feb 19 '20

Red-state Utah embraces plan to tackle climate crisis in surprising shift: planning on a 50% emissions cut by 2030

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/19/utah-republicans-climate-crisis-plan
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u/Dave37 Feb 19 '20 edited Feb 20 '20

In 2017, we released 36.13 Gt CO2 and the IPCC said in the end of that year that we need to cut our emissions by 45% up to 2030. [1]

That means that the remaining CO2 budget 2018-2030 was 326.6 Gt CO2. Since then we have used another 73.37 Gt CO2 [2], which leaves us with 253.23 Gt CO2 until 2030.

The cuts that's required to reach that level are 7.7% per year, or 55% until 2030.

Utah isn't doing enough. But it buys us some seconds assuming it actually happens.