When the Global Climate Action Summit convenes in San Francisco on September 12, 2018, one goal will be to affirm that the world beyond the Trumpian miasma is “still in” the Paris Accords. But the Summit seeks also to “demonstrate that stronger commitments are necessary, desirable and achievable.”
This convening is commendable and very important. It is also an opportunity for we, the people, to be crystal clear about what we expect of those in power: these “stronger commitments” must at long last be commitments to actions fully responsive to the desperate situation the world now confronts.
Many climate scientists and others have reached the conclusion that, because we have dithered so long, we now face the prospect of both extreme impacts from global warming and ocean acidification and, eventually, extreme rates of emission reduction. Every year of more procrastination makes both more difficult.
Major climate impacts are now inevitable. Global temperature has already increased by 1°C, with huge consequences. Another 0.5°C is essentially baked in. The odds are that we will easily exceed 2°C global average warming in this century. Right now, we have no means in place to prevent a warming of twice that.
We know what must be done if governments seriously want to halt warming at or below 2°C. Computer models indicate that to meet the goal of staying below 2°C warming, the United States should now be reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions somewhere between 7 percent and 15 percent a year, every year between now and mid-century. Such sustained declines are unprecedented, and the longer we wait to start, the steeper they must be.
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