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The United Nations recently released a major scientific report concluding that a hotter future is certain but that there is still a chance to prevent the most dire outcomes. Brad Plumer, a climate reporter for The New York Times, says there is a consensus among scientists on what must happen to limit global warming: Nations need to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In an interview, Mr. Plumer, who focuses on the policy and technology efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions, discussed the significance of the U.N. report, how he approaches a subject that can be upsetting to readers and his own environmentally conscious efforts. This interview has been edited.
What questions are you interested in exploring on your beat?
Halting further emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly from fossil fuels and deforestation, is an enormous task, and it means rethinking so many fundamental aspects of the modern global economy, from the cars we drive to how we produce food. So I’m drawn to writing about people trying to figure out the best ways to get to zero emissions, as well as the huge structural challenges standing in the way.
Did you know this U.N. report was coming?
We’ve known this report was coming for some time. Every few years since 1990, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has put out comprehensive assessments of the latest science around global warming, which means essentially summarizing thousands of existing studies into a coherent picture. This was the sixth such assessment, and hundreds of scientists had been working to put it together for months.
For this particular report, we were able to get our hands on a few early drafts that allowed us to figure out what was new and noteworthy here. And my colleague Henry Fountain and I called up a number of scientists beforehand to get a better sense of how climate research has advanced since the I.P.C.C.’s last big assessment in 2013. That early prep work helped us write an initial version of the story ahead of time. Then, when the panel released a finalized embargoed draft to reporters three days before its release, we could quickly check our facts to make sure we hadn’t missed anything big and then called up more authors for official comment.