Jennifer A Dlouhy, Bloomberg News

WASHIMGTON
EnergiesNet.com 11 23 2024

Mexico is working to have a net zero economy by 2050, marking a fresh bid by the country to more aggressively confront climate change under a new president that has prioritized the issue.

Mexico’s announcement on Thursday came alongside vows by the European Union, Canada and other countries to set 2035 climate targets that require steep reductions in planet-warming pollution to hit net zero goals by mid-century. The united show of force at the UN’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan is part of a building pressure campaign meant to prod major-emitting nations to step up their own ambition.

The world is heading toward a “catastrophic future” if things don’t change drastically — and soon, said Jose Luis Samaniego, director general of the Mexican Institute for Ecology and Climate Change. This “message is even more important,” he added, because “we are also seeing very concerning political messages signaling setbacks in climate leadership around the world.”

Mexico’s new net zero target — an effort to balance out any greenhouse gas emissions with removals by 2050 — was hailed as a crucial step forward by the world’s 13th-largest emitter under its new president, Claudia Sheinbaum. The declaration means that among the world’s 15-biggest emitters there’s now just one — Iran — that has yet to lay out a net zero commitment.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries have until Feb. 10 to submit new emissions-cutting pledges for 2035. Nearly 200 nations agreed at last year’s UN climate summit that at minimum those commitments should cover their entire economies and all greenhouse gases.

But the marker laid down by the coalition on Thursday is for 2035 emission-cutting pledges to also be on a direct path to mid-century net zero targets — with progressive and more rapid reductions in all greenhouse gases seen as essential to keeping warming below a critical 1.5C threshold.

The pledge is meant to be a road map for other big polluting countries, potentially including the world’s top emitter, China, which has set a goal of reaching net zero before 2060. Wopke Hoekstra, the European commissioner for climate action, said the countries were making a “plea, particularly to the largest economies and those that are emitting the most, to do something similar to what we are doing.”

The group effort — also joined by Chile, Norway and Switzerland — doubles down on existing emission-cutting plans from the UK, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.

The commitment sets “a model for others to follow” and lays out “an important benchmark” to judge the credibility of coming pledges, said Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Anything less than a straight-line emissions cut, with a “slower pace of transition, would raise questions about the commitment of countries to deliver on their net zero targets.”

bloomberg.com 11 21 2024