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