Why reducing global emissions is important

Photo: Bloomberg

With President Joe Biden’s administration recommitting the US to the Paris climate agreement and with a major United Nations climate-change conference (COP26) coming later this year, there is new hope for meaningful global policies to meet the challenge.

But while mounting evidence of increasing climate volatility — unprecedented wildfires in Australia, droughts in California and Sub-Saharan Africa, intensifying hurricane and cyclone seasons — suggests that we must move fast in curbing planet-warming greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, there are serious impediments to concluding any new global accord.