California experts offer solutions to stabilize Earth's climate

University of California (UC) climate experts on Tuesday issued a new report, providing solutions to stabilize Earth' s climate this century.

The report, Bending the Curve, was released at the UC Climate Neutrality Initiative Summit in San Diego, Southern California, and provides 10 scalable solutions to reduce global greenhouse emissions.

Addressing the summit on Tuesday, California Governor Jerry Brown said the solutions from the UC Climate Solutions Group could help shape talks among global leaders at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris this November, local media reported.

Researchers at the summit discussed their blueprint for actions that they say the state and the world should undertake to tackle the problem, including reducing the carbon footprint of the wealthiest 1 billion people.

If the world reduces its carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050, that could slow the disastrous impacts of climate change by 25 years, UC researchers said.

Data shows that global warming could be slowed dramatically by reducing greenhouse gases like methane emissions by 50 percent and black carbon by 90 percent over the next 15 years.

"Addressing these challenges and reducing our carbon footprint is a moral imperative," Napolitano Janet Napolitano, University of California President, said at the two-day climate change summit as she vowed to turn the system's 10 campuses into a living laboratory for solutions that can be scaled up to state, national and global levels. Endi