A new study in Nature Communications finds that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C is still possible, but some countries require support to meet their climate responsibilities. An "additional carbon accountability" indicator is introduced, revealing that the EU and 17 other countries must exceed their own current targets to achieve this global goal.
There’s simply too much baked into the climate’s inertial change and the expected/already started feedbacks. We haven’t change enough to show progress, and are already touching the limits in some methods of measurement. The IPCC gave up years ago and admitted we will shoot past 1.5 but would just use future tech that doesn’t exist to pull it back down.
I know there’s a drive to try and look at the positive, especially since anything but is called doomerism and even blamed for the inaction. I wonder how long we’re going to keep fooling ourselves that we can fix this and even go backwards. We need to accept where we’re going and plan for adaptation for a harsher world. Can’t wait until we shift into “if we can just keep limits below 2.0” while not changing anything.
We need to act now, like the graph with a sudden unprecedented downturn, and also to prepare for things to get worse than we’ve ever seen them get.
I don’t think we’ll do those things. But we could. It’s the current political and business leaders who aren’t willing to. Think about how everything changed during Covid. A lot of people even at the current level of realization would be willing to make serious changes if it put us off the doom-course.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
A good example. Some things did change. In good and bad directions. A lot was handwaved around to get back to status quo as much as possible. It’s exactly how resistant we are to change, and climate is no different. It’s actually worse, since it’s so much more subtle and long term than a disease that is hurting people around you, and yet people even denied that as much as possible.
There’s simply too much baked into the climate’s inertial change and the expected/already started feedbacks. We haven’t change enough to show progress, and are already touching the limits in some methods of measurement. The IPCC gave up years ago and admitted we will shoot past 1.5 but would just use future tech that doesn’t exist to pull it back down.
I know there’s a drive to try and look at the positive, especially since anything but is called doomerism and even blamed for the inaction. I wonder how long we’re going to keep fooling ourselves that we can fix this and even go backwards. We need to accept where we’re going and plan for adaptation for a harsher world. Can’t wait until we shift into “if we can just keep limits below 2.0” while not changing anything.
Well, we need to do both.
We need to act now, like the graph with a sudden unprecedented downturn, and also to prepare for things to get worse than we’ve ever seen them get.
I don’t think we’ll do those things. But we could. It’s the current political and business leaders who aren’t willing to. Think about how everything changed during Covid. A lot of people even at the current level of realization would be willing to make serious changes if it put us off the doom-course.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
A good example. Some things did change. In good and bad directions. A lot was handwaved around to get back to status quo as much as possible. It’s exactly how resistant we are to change, and climate is no different. It’s actually worse, since it’s so much more subtle and long term than a disease that is hurting people around you, and yet people even denied that as much as possible.