“That path, however, must end with phasing out most, if not all, energy based on fossil fuels.”
The Washington Post editorializes:
…But two policies can buy the world more time to allow carbon-free technologies to catch up. One is aimed at greenhouse substances that clear out of the atmosphere after a few years, months or even days. Cutting back the emission of soot and ozone gases such as methane would reduce the world’s warming by as much as a half degree Celsius over the next few decades, according to a study in last month’s Science. Adding hydrofluorocarbons — another class of short-lived pollutants — to the list would help even more to delay the approach of temperature thresholds beyond which global warming could be catastrophic.
Reducing these emissions is relatively cheap, especially when the benefits to health are factored in. For example, primitive cooking stoves in developing countries produce much of the world’s soot; using more efficient ones would prevent perhaps millions of deaths from respiratory illness. Methane, meanwhile, is the primary component of natural gas — a commodity that pipeline or coal-mine operators could sell if they kept it from escaping into the atmosphere. Researchers have even concluded that global crop yields would rise…