Three recent developments show that it’s not too late for renewable energy to be our main route to keeping global warming below 2° C.

• A paper in Nature Climate Change shows that it’s possible (though still challenging) to keep global warming to 1.5° C without relying heavily on removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Carbon removal is an unproven technique, especially at the scale needed to affect the global climate. Climate mitigation strategies that emphasize these negative emission technologies also pose the risk of shifting our focus away from the bottom line: the need to dramatically reduce carbon emissions.
• The International Renewable Energy Agency has released a plan that gives us a 66 percent chance of keeping global warming below 2° C primarily by increasing the supply of renewable energy.
• The energy consulting firm Ecofys offered a scenario for getting to zero global emissions by 2050 mostly without negative emissions.

Vox has the full story: What genuine, no-bullshit ambition on climate change would look like.