"Carbon Chasm" - Companies' Voluntary GHG Reductions are Insufficient to Prevent Worst of Climate Change

A new survey [1] of the 100 largest public companies shows 73 percent have set greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals. However, there is a large gap between what these goals would accomplish and what United Nations scientists say is required to prevent the worst of climate change.
 
Scientists are calling for an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050. Based on the survey by the Carbon Disclosure Project [2], if society at large reduced emissions at the rate of these companies, we would not meet the level of reductions scientists say is required until 2089 – 39 years too late.
 
Exemplifying the idea that "what gets measured can be managed," the Carbon Disclosure Project has been collecting GHG emissions data from hundreds of companies over the last seven years. This voluntary effort provided the data needed to identify the "carbon chasm" between what these companies are doing to reduce emissions and what the science says is needed to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
 
Measuring GHG emissions at the company and facility level is crucial to managing those emissions. In the next few months, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will release its plan for tracking emissions [3] from most facilities in the United States. Such publicly accessible data are needed to launch any national climate change program and track its progress.