With every day that passes in the Anthropocene, the Earth's governing climate cycle becomes more agitated. The greenhouse gas effect heating our atmosphere has a cumulative, exponential impact. Until we implement a global stop on emissions, we continuously contribute more and more to the future effects of climate change, amassing a long term chain reaction. Considering the severity of dependence on fossil fuels, political circumstance, and a lack of global prioritization of and action on the climate crisis, we won't be able to end emissions for many years. Most of today's sustainability plans set their zero-carbon target year as 2050, with the more ambitious aiming for 2030. From the date of authorship, that means we have another 30 years of emissions to add to the atmosphere. This does not consider the number of very likely scenarios where we cannot reach zero-carbon by 2050; as the impacts of climate change become more severe, our progress towards renewable energy dependence, sustainable and resilient societies, and mitigation technologies like carbon capture could be harshly impeded.
Kate Connors (Fri,) studied this question.