UK commits to ending greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 News
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UK commits to ending greenhouse gas emissions by 2050

British Prime Minister Teresa May issued a statement Wednesday committing to passing legislation aimed at reducing the UK’s climate change emissions to net zero by 2050.

The UK government has been under increasing pressure to address its role in global climate change in recent weeks, as a series of highly public protests and sit-ins disrupted travel and business across London. Calling themselves the Extinction Rebellion, the student-led group demanded that the country commit to aggressively combating climate change, including the elimination of greenhouse gasses by 2025. While May’s proposed plan is less ambitious, the legislation is among the first of its kind proposed by the largest countries in the world. In her press release, May said that Britain “led the world in innovation during the Industrial Revolution, and now we must lead the world to a cleaner, greener form of growth.”

The UN recently published a report showing that human-caused climate change is worsening at an increasing rate and imploring world governments to act quickly to try to mitigate the effects. Likewise, in November a group of 13 US agencies released the Fourth National Climate Assessment, finding that climate change will have profound effects over the next century unless drastic action is quickly undertaken.