As the IPCC issues its direst warnings yet about an inevitable rise in global warming into the 1.5C danger zone, Nafeez Ahmed proposes a better way out of its dystopian vision
All five scenarios in the new report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published this month, show the planet on track to breach the 1.5 degrees Celsius ‘safe limit’ for global warming within the next 20 years. Only one scenario, involving ambitious reductions of carbon emissions to net zero as well as a further withdrawal of the carbon already in the atmosphere, would see global average temperatures eventually dropping back down to 1.4C by the end of the century.
This is the direst warning ever received from an IPCC report, agreed by 195 countries, and it suggests that, on our current course, the climate danger zone is now unavoidable.
Even with the most dramatic emissions reductions possible, the Earth is about to enter a 1.5C world and set to stay within a 1.5-1.4C range for much of the century. Our best hope, in this scenario, is to be in a position to cool the planet while we are in the danger zone.
This suggests that the Paris Agreement, premised on the goal of reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change, is too little, too late. Further underlying the IPCC’s scenarios is the assumption that 1.4C will be significantly different to 1.5C. But there is mounting evidence that, due to the complexities of the Earth’s system, 1.4C will not be meaningfully safer.
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