The latest climate models show that the opportunity window for achieving the Paris 1.5o target goal for climate warming has closed. Indeed, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) suggests that 1.5 degrees of warming will be reached before the end of this decade.
Modelling of emissions trajectories predict that warming will blow past 1.5 degrees to between 2.6 and 3.3 degrees by 2100 if current policies continue. The graph below sets out the alternative trajectories and shows clearly that emissions in the last several years have continued to grow to all time highs. Under current policies, we may see some modest decline in emissions after 2025, but it is evident that even the limited Paris Agreement pledges have not been met in aggregate.
This stark news is neatly summarized in a recent article in The Economist. The UNEP work has gone largely unreported in a significant way in the mainstream media which is more concerned with Trumpian acrobatics, cost-of-living, and various wars. I alluded to this pause in climate concern in a recent post.
The UNEP report makes for sobering reading. Not only is the 1.5o target dead but so too is 2 degrees as shown in the following graphic. The reality is 3 degrees warming is a possibility, yet adaptation plans, where they even exist, are posited on a 1.5-to-2-degree warming. The report states that “…the world (is) heading for a serious escalation of climate risks and damages.”
In my novel Court of the Grandchildren, the protagonist, David Moreland, a senior bureaucrat responsible for climate planning, speaks to his accusers during his 2059 trial: “…I had seen a diversity of views on the climate change threat. Sadly, this led me to conclude that only the occurrence of a global catastrophic climate event…would overwhelmingly change public and political opinion.”
David Moreland’s words are feeling more and more prescient as each year passes.
The writer is a co-author of Court of the Grandchildren, a novel set in 2050s America.
Main image credit: UNEP
For posts on similar themes, consider:
The Race to 100% Renewable Electricity
