Costa Rica unveils plan to achieve zero emissions by 2050 in climate change fight

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Costa Rica unveils plan to achieve zero emissions by 2050 in climate change fight

Reuters in San José
Mon 25 Feb 2019 21.13 GMT Last modified on Mon 25 Feb 2019 21.28 GMT

Costa Rica has launched an economy-wide plan to “decarbonize” the country by 2050, as the Central American nation aims to show other nations what is possible to address climate change.

Environment minister, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, said that if the plan is achieved, his grandchildren in 2035 will have the same carbon footprint as his grandparents did in the 1940s – and by 2050 his grandchildren will have none at all.

“Not only are we going to reduce that footprint but we are going to bring many benefits with it”, Rodríguez said.

But Jairo Quirós, an electrical energy researcher at the University of Costa Rica, warned the plan would be challenging, and “should be viewed with some caution”.

Under the roadmap launched Sunday, Costa Rica by 2050 would achieve “zero net emissions”, meaning it would produce no more emissions than it can offset through things such as maintaining and expanding its extensive forests.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/25/costa-rica-plan-decarbonize-2050-climate-change-fight

[NNadir]

1. This is very easy for Costa Rica, since hydroelectricity supplies all of its electricity, and has...

...done so for many decades, with a smattering of geothermal electricity.

Of course, this is yet another one of those detestable "by 'such and such a year'" statements that is an expression of complete and total contempt for future generations, inasmuch it claims that they will easily do what we are unable to do ourselves.

Since Costa Rica is not, and never has been, a climate change contributor on any scale, even if this traditional hand waving sort of nonsense, by which we screw all future generations by dumping responsibility for our inaction on them, actually came to pass - it won't, but if it did - it would have no effect on the rising use dangerous fossil fuels and the rising concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the atmosphere owing to rising rates of dumping said waste into the planetary atmosphere.

The current average yearly increase in the concentrations of this dangerous waste in the planetary atmosphere is between 2.2 and 2.3 ppm per year currently, and rising.

Despite decades of "by 'such and such a date'" pronouncements, each more silly than the previous one, we set a record at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory early this month, with a weekly average higher than 412 ppm for the first time ever.

We may reasonably expect the May/June yearly max to by 416 ppm or higher this year.

New Record Weekly High For CO2 Measurements at Mauna Loa.

2050 is 32 years from now. Thirty-two times 2.2 is 70.4. The sum of 416 and 70 is 486.

How is it that Costa Rica is so sure it will rain on the Panamanian Isthmus in 2050? That its rain forests won't burn like Malaysian rain forests and Indonesian rain forests have?

Even the Amazon is experiencing droughts periodically now.

It really is time to stop this nonsense, taking these pronouncements even remotely seriously. They are cynical, lazy, and contemptuous.