What counts as progress in the battle against climate change?
Despite big shifts toward renewable energy, the world still has far to go to give up fossil fuels.
It's been more than 30 years since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro sparked a global conversation about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere. Twenty-nine United Nations climate summits to figure out the strategy have come and gone, yet emissions keep increasing. That agreement to prevent the global temperature from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average? The world blew it. And demand for fossil fuels continues to climb sharply.
As the Earth's thermostat rises, this quiz can illuminate how much progress is being made, and how difficult it will be to slash greenhouse gas emissions without sacrificing economic growth.
✓ Check Yourself The Post partnered with Gapminder, a Swedish nonprofit, to survey 600 people ages 18 to 65. The sample was balanced to reflect U.S. demography.
1 of 5 Since 2000, the U.S. economy has grown about 30 percent. By how much has the average amount of carbon emitted per American changed since then?
Decreased about 25 percent
Stayed about the same
Increased about 25 percent
This news is encouraging, and it has fed a sense of optimism that the job can be done as long as the political will can be mustered. In the United States, carbon emissions are down about 20 percent since their peak in 2007.
A critical question is whether poorer, less technologically advanced countries seeking to bolster their economic growth can afford to replace an energy infrastructure fueled by oil, gas and coal with one that runs on renewable energy sources.
2 of 5 The cost of energy from solar panels today is roughly:
1 percent of what it cost in 1980
21 percent of the 1980 cost
41 percent of the 1980 cost
This is good news, as the falling price of renewable energy will incentivize companies and households to decarbonize. Some clean energy advocates use these data to argue that the energy transition should be straightforward: Simply deploy solar cells everywhere. However, solar energy requires a great deal of land. It also generates energy only where the sun shines — which isn't always where the energy is needed — and it produces no power after sunset. Wind energy has similar drawbacks. Solar panels at Shotwick Solar Park in Deeside, Britain, on Tuesday. (Adam Vaughan/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
By the end of 2023, some 43 percent of global electricity generation was powered by solar, wind and other renewable sources — up dramatically since the turn of the 21st century, when these sources accounted for only 18 percent. Yet the distance to 100 percent remains daunting.
3 of 5 How much of the electricity generation capacity added worldwide in 2023 was powered by clean sources?
About 10 percent
About 45 percent
About 85 percent
This counts as progress. Yet electricity generation accounts for less than one-fifth of the world's energy demand. Considering all energy uses, how much further does the world have to go?
4 of 5 Of all the world's energy use in 2000, about 86 percent came from burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas). What is the number today?
About 51 percent
About 63 percent
About 82 percent
Discouraging though this statistic might be, perhaps there is a silver lining: If humanity consumes fossil fuels so intensely, perhaps they will soon be exhausted. How much could be left?
5 of 5 During the past 40 years, the total amount of oil and natural gas in known underground reserves:
Has been reduced by more than half
Has remained about the same
Has more than doubled 0 of 5
Your score:
It's not as if humanity hasn't tried to decarbonize. Over the past few years, investment in clean energy production has soared. China is strongly supporting the industry, and former president Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act promoted clean power. Evidently, though, efforts to bend the curve have been inadequate, and people are understandably worried that, under President Donald Trump, the United States will stop trying.
Trucks wait to be loaded with coal before dropping their cargo off at a storage facility in Chongqing, China, on Feb. 12. (AFP/Getty Images)
Washington's recent withdrawal from the collective effort to mitigate climate change will be costly. Poorer countries need help from richer ones to decarbonize and to achieve a standard of living that enables them to tackle other problems — including providing shelter, education, health care and security for their citizens — that are understandably more important to them in the short term than the changing climate.
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