In a world surrounded by negative media and constant reporting on climate change, it can seem that nothing can be done or that humanity is facing an insurmountable challenge. With news articles and reports coming our each day on how pressing climate change is and how it is exasperating these natural disasters. Thus, it can be easy for people to think that little to no progress is being made or that climate change is an issue that humanity just can not face. In reality, the world has made a lot of progress toward our climate goals, and new promising technologies and methodologies come out each day, making combating this challenge seem a little bit easier.
Carbon Emissions
Although global carbon emissions have not been reduced, they have been showing signs of slowing down. More promisingly, many countries, namely well-developed countries such as the United States(Figure 1) and the members of the European Union(Figure 2), have seen reductions in emissions.
According to the EPA, the United States has cut emissions by 21% since 2005[2]; progress is expected to expedite as technologies are refined and more support is gathered for this cause. The European has shown even more promising signs as the EEA reported that emissions have dropped by 48% since 2005[3]. This indicates that the EU is well on track towards meeting its 55% emissions reduction target by 2030, with its emissions reduction being projected to be around 62% at this rate. The US is slightly behind its goal of 50-52% reductions by 2030 but still shows promising progress. As many other countries make similar progress towards their own emission goals, it has become increasingly likely that the world will avoid the very worst climate warming. However, progress is still far from the carbon reductions necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
New Technology
New technologies are constantly being developed to bring us closer to our climate goals; countless technologies show tremendous promise as they are being developed. Some new technologies that have been announced in 2024 are new carbon-sequestering concrete developed at MIT (Sublime Systems)[4]; the Rondo Heat Battery, which directly stores energy produced as heat, which is used whenever needed[5]; and wave energy technology being put to a real-life test for the first time.
Conclusion
There is a delicate balance between believing we have made enough progress for inaction and believing climate change is an insurmountable challenge. Sources from all different areas of the world have skewed people’s thoughts on the topic to either side, thinking that climate change is not even a problem, or that it is the great calamity of the world, or they just don’t care due to how polarized the topic has become. However, in reality, where we are in combatting this issue is somewhere in between. Significant progress is being made every day, and as time goes on, it seems more and more likely that we will reach our goals, but until then, we still have a long way to go in our mission to stop climate change.
Bibliography
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states
[2] https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions
The Green Analysis 
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