EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE until Wednesday, Nov. 3, at 5:01 p.m. PT - Stanford-led research shows carbon emissions

The United States – the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the past century and one of the world’s biggest polluters in terms of both annual and per capita CO2emissions – has pledged to cut net carbon emissions to half of 2005 levels before the end of this decade, and reach net-zero emissions before 2050. [...] Fossil fuels on the rise Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels like gas and coal are on track to rise in every country and region in the world this year compared to 2020, when the economic disruptions of COVID-19 led to an unprecedented 1.9-billion-ton (5.4 percent) . [...] Investing in decarbonization Overall, the new figures “reflect a return to the pre-COVID fossil-based economy,” said Pierre Friedlingstein, lead author of the Earth System Science Data Discussions paper and chair of mathematical modeling of climate systems at the University of Exeter in the UK. [...] “The window is still open to pass much-needed climate-related funding here in the United States.” Co-authors on the Environmental Research Letters paper are affiliated with Ecole Normale Supérieure; University of East Anglia; CICERO Center for International Climate Research; CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; Laboratory of the Sciences for the Climate and the Environment at CEA-CNRS-UVSQ; University of. [...] The research was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Australian National Environmental Science Programme’s Climate Systems Hub; the European Commission Horizon 2020 projects VERIFY and CoCO2; Future Earth; and the Royal Socie.