
Consider this: The UN just issued a report on an analysis of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs, of 146 countries. The INDC's represent the pledges each country has made to reduce its output of greenhouse gases. The press release for the report starts off with happy talk:
An unprecedented world-wide effort is underway to combat climate change, building confidence that nations can cost effectively meet their stated objective of keeping a global temperature rise to under 2 degrees C.

It's not until the ninth graph of this press release that you read that the actual prediction for temperature increases by 2100 based on the analysis of the INDCs is 2.7 degrees Celsius - a third higher than the upper safe limit. What's more, you also read that the INDCs "have the capability of limiting the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100."
What does that mean? It means that the overwhelming majority of the pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions end by 2030. If you assume all of those same countries commit in the future to keep reducing emissions after 2030 at the rate they did before 2030, you can limit warming to 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100. If they don't, warming easily could reach 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, which is disaster territory.

And still the nations of the world - more particularly, the industrialized nations of the world, the rich nations of the world - hem and haw and stumble and make non-binding promises of some future actions, while the temperatures continue to edge up and 2015 is on track to be the hottest year on record - beating the old record set way back in 2014.
It's not that we can't do it - just about a month ago I described new studies that showed how the US and the entire world could go to fully renewable-energy-based economies by 2050. We have the technology, we have the resources, we even have the money. What we don't have is the will to challenge entrenched corporate interests and the interest in inconveniencing ourselves.
And it is our children and especially our grandchildren who will pay the price for our hubris, our greed, our laziness, and our indifference. And that is an outrage.
Sources cited in links:
http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfccc-newsroom/indc-synthesis-report-press-release/
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/11/03/3718146/misleading-un-report-confuses-media-paris-climate-talks/
http://news.mit.edu/2015/study-persian-gulf-deadly-heat-1026
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/10/26/report-says-climate-change-could-push-persian-gulf-temperatures-lethal-extremes/8RvxLlDbgnl0co4PSywagP/story.html
http://www.boston.com/news/weather/2015/10/22/will-probably-the-hottest-year-ever-recorded/fSdg7KHBbenvlcOdhP8FcP/story.html
No comments:
Post a Comment