Science and Technology to Support a National Energy Strategy for the United States Available to Purchase

Over the next five decades progress to meaningfully address the risk of significant climate change will require an estimated 80%, or more, reduction in the global emissions of greenhouse gases. From the baseline in 2007 of over seven billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions, three‐quarters of which comes from fossil fuel combustion (with the remainder largely from land conversion and forest burning), the reductions required are from a global emissions portfolio that is currently increasing. As the largest current emitter, at roughly 25% of the global total—but more importantly as the nation with the largest energy resource and research base to affect change—the United States and its inaction on climate protection for the last several years is poised to play a, if not the critical role in our collective climate future.