Accelerating Clean Energy Transitions to Safeguard Human Health and Survival

Abstract

The year 2023 was the warmest year in the 174-year global instrumental record. The year was also marked by a series of climate-related extreme events, including heat waves, storms, and wildfires that caused widespread economic and health impacts. The 28th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change called for transitioning away from fossil fuels and accelerating action in this critical decade. All countries must move rapidly toward net zero emissions and scale up their action to ensure achievement of the Paris climate goals–viz., limiting the global temperature increase from preindustrial levels to well below 2 °C and pursuing efforts to keep it below 1.5 °C. There is growing concern about whether the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C is still achievable. We believe that it is still possible to limit warming to 1.5 °C if we take seven essential actions so human health and survival can be safeguarded: scaling up the energy transition to achieve carbon neutrality before the middle of this century; rapidly phasing out the construction of new fossil fuel exploration and infrastructure; enforcing an international carbon price; tightening emission targets across both the global north and south; promoting and adopting low-consumption lifestyle as the social norm; engaging in transformative change to simultaneously act on climate, biodiversity, equity, human health, and well-being; and boosting collective efforts and strengthening international cooperation.