Forget geoengineering. We must stop burning fossil fuels. Right now

The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), one of which was published this week, are highly scrutinized and very important, but they mostly confirm what we already know: man-made greenhouse gases are rapidly and catastrophically changing the planet, and if we don't quickly reduce burning fossil fuels, we face a dire future. The message is far from hopeless – “Taking effective and just climate action will not only reduce loss and damage to nature and people, but also bring wider benefits,” IPCC Chairman Hoesung Lee said in a press release. "This summary report underlines the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that if we act now, we can still secure a sustainable, livable future for all." But "acting now" means taking dramatic action to change the way we do most things, especially produce energy. People who should be treating this situation like a colossal emergency are still finding ways to delay and weaken a meaningful response. Fossil fuels generate huge profits for some of the most powerful individuals and institutions on Earth, who influence and even control many other people. It's bleak to say, but there's a kind of comedy in it as they keep trying to come up with excuses not to do the one key thing that climate activists, political pundits, activists and scientists have long been telling them they need to do: stop fossil fuel financing , stop their extraction, stop their burning and accelerate the transition from their use. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, perhaps the most powerful person swimming against the tide, said yesterday that we must move to "net-zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed economies and by 2040 for the rest of the world" and introduce "a global phase-down of current oil and gas production that will be in line with the global goal of net-zero production by 2050". All the other measures that help the climate – including protecting forests and wildlife, rethinking agriculture, food, transport and urban design – are important, but there is no substitute or solution to leaving the fossil fuel age. The IPCC tells us that “any increase in global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards. Deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a marked slowdown in global warming within about two decades and also to marked changes in the composition of the atmosphere within a few years." In the next section of the report, the scientists declare: "Projected CO2 emissions from the existing fossil fuel infrastructure fuels without additional emission reductions would exceed the remaining carbon budget at 1.5°C.” This translates to: what we are already extracting and using is already too much to maintain the temperature limit set in Paris. As climate communicator Ketan Joshi put it on Twitter: "The people who decide the pace of climate action and dependence on fossil fuels aren't acting like they're pulling the lever for Earth's next few thousand years."