All posts tagged: 1.5C

Why 1.5°C failed and setting a new limit would make things worse

Why 1.5°C failed and setting a new limit would make things worse

Published by skeptic

Climate change has already led to more frequent disasters, such as the recent floods in Mozambique Associated Press/Alamy More than a decade on from the 2015 Paris climate conference, it is hard not to feel that we have, at best, been treading water on climate action. Sure, there are plenty more electric vehicles on the road and, globally, renewables now produce more electricity than coal. But we continue to pump out more than 41 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year, while fossil fuel companies plan for expansion and governments row back on green measures. There was real optimism in Paris, as countries pledged to pursue efforts to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Ten years on, this ambition is, to all intents and purposes, dead in the water. Such is the mechanism used for defining when our world breaches 1.5°C, however, that the year this happens is likely to be officially confirmed only in 2040 or thereabouts – a decade after it actually occurs. The 1.5°C mark has been conflated …

The totemic 1.5°C climate target: Best ideas of the century

The totemic 1.5°C climate target: Best ideas of the century

Published by skeptic

In the first decade of the 21st century, most scientists and policy-makers were focused on 2°C as being the highest “safe” threshold for warming above pre-industrial levels. But emerging research was beginning to suggest that even this was too severe, threatening sea level rise that would wipe out low-lying islands. In response, some scientists began to investigate the benefits of keeping any temperature rise closer to 1.5°C. Armed with this research, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a United Nations negotiating bloc, called for the adoption of a global target to limit warming to 1.5°C, warning that a 2°C warming limit “would devastate many small island developing countries”. James Fletcher, a UN negotiator for the AOSIS bloc at the 2015 UN COP climate summit in Paris, says it was an uphill battle to convince other countries to adopt this much tougher global goal. He recalls the head of a lower-income nation’s delegation cornering him at the end of a meeting in Paris: “He was wagging his finger in my face and saying, ‘You small island states will get 1.5°C over …