New Report Says Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Rising Faster Than Expected

A report issued today by a leading consulting firm says that worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases are rising faster than had been previously estimated and that delaying reductions past 2010 would cause high risks of permanent environmental damage from climate change.

The report also says that there is a potential to reduce emissions by 30 percent below 1990 levels and that the cost of achieving such savings would run into the hundreds of billions of Euros.

"This would be sufficient to have a good chance of holding global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius threshold, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," the report says.

But the report cautions that a delay in achieving that target could cause serious damage to the planet's ecosystems and other environmental harm and that the goal itself is extremely challenging:

Capturing enough of this potential to stay below the 2 degrees Celsius threshold will be highly challenging, however. Our research finds not only that all regions and sectors would have to capture close to the full potential for abatement that is available to them; even deep emission cuts in some sectors will not be sufficient. Action also needs to be timely. A 10-year delay in taking abatement action would make it virtually impossible to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

The report by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm is available here (registration required).