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Related: About this forumA Plan B for Climate Agreements—U.N. negotiations are going nowhere, and greenhouse-gas emissions…
http://www.technologyreview.com/review/528106/a-plan-b-for-climate-agreements/[font face=Serif][font size=5]A Plan B for Climate Agreements[/font]
[font size=4] U.N. negotiations are going nowhere, and greenhouse-gas emissions are soaring. Its time to move on.[/font]
[font size=3]By Kevin Bullis on June 12, 2014
In 2007, just before he accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri, the organizations leader, declared that the world was running out of time to prevent catastrophic global warming. If theres no action before 2012, thats too late, Pachauri told the New York Times. What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.
This April, the IPCC released a long-awaited report assessing just how far weve come since Pachauris stark pronouncement. The news was grim. There has yet to be any sign of the global action that Pachauri and others had desperately sought. In 2007, the IPCC called for emissions to level off by 2015, but the world is emitting greenhouse gases faster than ever. Even now, Pachauri and some other IPCC leaders remain publicly optimistic, saying its still possible to avoid catastrophic climate change if we act very soon. But delve into the new IPCC report itself and youll find a much less hopeful picture.
What the report overall shows is that the only way youre going to stop climate change is by assuming that governments will make a whole series of heroic efforts, says David Victor, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California at San Diego and one of the lead authors of the report. For example, if were to meet the U.N. goal of limiting the increase in the worlds average temperature to 2 °C above preindustrial levels, all key technologieswind, solar, nuclear, power plants that capture and store carbon dioxide, and so onhave to scale up quickly, even though some havent been growing at all and carbon capture at power plants has yet to be commercially deployed. The report says the worlds governments must also immediately agree to binding and effective climate policieseven though massive efforts over the past two decades have failed to produce any such agreements.
A lot of publicity was given to the fact that the IPCC says limiting warming is doable, says Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and also a key IPCC author. But the situation is not as rosy as its been characterized, he says. When you introduce political reality, then youre talking about (2 °C) not being feasible.
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[font size=4] U.N. negotiations are going nowhere, and greenhouse-gas emissions are soaring. Its time to move on.[/font]
[font size=3]By Kevin Bullis on June 12, 2014
In 2007, just before he accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri, the organizations leader, declared that the world was running out of time to prevent catastrophic global warming. If theres no action before 2012, thats too late, Pachauri told the New York Times. What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.
This April, the IPCC released a long-awaited report assessing just how far weve come since Pachauris stark pronouncement. The news was grim. There has yet to be any sign of the global action that Pachauri and others had desperately sought. In 2007, the IPCC called for emissions to level off by 2015, but the world is emitting greenhouse gases faster than ever. Even now, Pachauri and some other IPCC leaders remain publicly optimistic, saying its still possible to avoid catastrophic climate change if we act very soon. But delve into the new IPCC report itself and youll find a much less hopeful picture.
What the report overall shows is that the only way youre going to stop climate change is by assuming that governments will make a whole series of heroic efforts, says David Victor, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California at San Diego and one of the lead authors of the report. For example, if were to meet the U.N. goal of limiting the increase in the worlds average temperature to 2 °C above preindustrial levels, all key technologieswind, solar, nuclear, power plants that capture and store carbon dioxide, and so onhave to scale up quickly, even though some havent been growing at all and carbon capture at power plants has yet to be commercially deployed. The report says the worlds governments must also immediately agree to binding and effective climate policieseven though massive efforts over the past two decades have failed to produce any such agreements.
A lot of publicity was given to the fact that the IPCC says limiting warming is doable, says Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and also a key IPCC author. But the situation is not as rosy as its been characterized, he says. When you introduce political reality, then youre talking about (2 °C) not being feasible.
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A Plan B for Climate Agreements—U.N. negotiations are going nowhere, and greenhouse-gas emissions… (Original Post)
OKIsItJustMe
Jun 2014
OP
daleanime
(17,796 posts)1. kick, kick, kick.....
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)2. Plan B is Die, die, die.
It is the preferred solution to both CCC and the resource exhaustion crisis. We are scheduled for a massive die off. A population reduction by 90% or more.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)3. That's how I see it.
Given the political and psychological realities, as well as all the host of other ecological problems that aren't even being mentioned, the only realistic outcome of this situation is death. Lots and lots of it. Maybe not extinction, but you never know.