Beyond the target itself, there are serious questions over whether the Coalition has adequate policies to accelerate emissions cuts.
While the Paris Agreement represents significant progress toward addressing this global challenge, international leaders need to further accelerate emissions reductions to keep global temperature rise "well below 2°C above-pre-industrial levels and aiming for 1.5 degrees Celsius," as called for in the landmark agreement.
Furthermore, the rapidly growing number of motor vehicles accelerates emissions of other ambient air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and ozone (Chen et al. 2004).
There would need to be a huge disruption in the market and economic activity in 2030 to suddenly accelerate emission reductions enough to reach the Paris goal of zero net emissions by mid century.
It also found that this has to happen quickly to avoid a massive economic shock and a huge disruption in the market and economic activity in 2030 to suddenly accelerate emission reductions enough to reach the Paris goals.
It "anticipates accelerated emission reductions post 2030 once agricultural mitigation technology becomes more widely applied".
The recent agreement in Beijing identifies a date by which China will peak in its carbon emissions (2030, though Beijing will aim for 2025) and accelerates emission cuts in the United States, particularly after 2020.
And least of all should we make exceptions for the very countries that are accelerating carbon emissions while the rest of us seek to reduce emissions.
For instance, if contemporary trends in architecture, even in this period of accelerating carbon emissions, favour shiny, glass-and-metal-plated towers, do we not have to ask, what are the patterns of desire that are fed by these gestures?
Meanwhile, documentation that Europe's conversion of coal plants to wood is accelerating carbon emissions and driving large-scale clearing of sensitive, biologically diverse wetland forests across the coast of the southeastern United States is making international headlines.
Conveniently, the Koch brothers' passionate philosophical libertarianism dovetails precisely with their paramount bottom-line interest: the elimination of government regulations aimed at containing toxic pollution and climate change-accelerating emissions, the very substances that Koch companies spew around the clock.
