While reducing carbon dioxide emissions is vitally important to decreasing the effects of climate change, countries should not discount the massive impact short-lived climate pollutants can have on the environment, Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, and Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, wrote in an editorial posted Tuesday to the UNFCCC website.
“The United Nations Environment Programme’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants estimates that fast action to reduce SLCPs, especially methane and black carbon, has the potential to slow down the warming expected by 2050 by as much as 0.5-[degrees] Celsius,” according to the editorial.
Steps to reduce SLCPs should be taken in concert with measures to reduce carbon, the two said, as it will take a significant amount of time for the world to shift drastically from high carbon emitting practices. “Of course, the reduction of SLCPs should not come at the expense of efforts to cut CO2 emissions. On the contrary, the world can and must reduce both simultaneously,” the editorial specifies.
