Incredibly, current climate pledges could keep heating below 2C – but our work isn’t over

By Dilip -

The battle to get countries and companies to sign up to net zero is being won. Now let’s keep pushing for more ambitious targets. he climate crisis is often seen in binary terms. Precise temperature targets – limiting global heating to 1.5C or 2C – imply decisive moments of victory or loss. Headlines warn that we have only “12 years to save the world”. A recent study in the journal Nature showing that countries’ post-Cop26 net-zero pledges, if met, will probably keep global heating to below 2C will be seen in similar terms.

Governments and companies will claim we should be reassured by their decisive actions to reduce emissions. They will say we finally have a real agreement to keep heating below 2C. We should be sceptical. As activists and scientists have said over and over again, targets are easy to set but hard to meet. And they are being promised by the same leaders who are already failing to meet existing commitments to reduce emissions. But to see this latest news in binary terms – either as a sign it’ll be OK or another depressing lie – misses its deeper significance….

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/14/current-climate-pledges-heating-below-2c-net-zero


George Monbiot: Dead Line - Future corporate profits are officially more important than life on Earth


Thawing permafrost is roiling the Arctic landscape, driven by a hidden world of changes / Researchers identified over 5,500 new viruses in the ocean


JOSH DZIEZA - Save the Honeybee, Sterilize the Earth


Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death. By George Monbiot


Climate crisis: economists ‘grossly undervalue young lives’


Hundreds of global civil society representatives walk out of Cop26 in protest


CODE RED for Humanity - The IPCC report is clear: nothing short of transforming society will avert catastrophe


Murtaza Hussain: Industrialized Militaries & Climate Emergency // Rajan Menon: Hypersonic Weapons and National (In)security Why Arms Races Never End


ALFRED MCCOY: China Is Digging Its Own Grave (and Ours as Well)


Book review: The Mushroom at the End of the World review – life in capitalist ruins


The Anthropocene epoch: have we entered a new phase of planetary history? By Nicola Davison


JOHN BUELL: Living on a Newly Unrecognizable Planet


Chomsky: Internationalism or Extinction


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