In 2015, when the countries of the world cleared the Paris Agreement, they adhered to the global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius over the pre -industrial levels and “”Follow up effortsTowards keeping them less than 1.5 ° C. The plan did not work well. Ten years later, the planet may have crossed this lower threshold sooner than expected.
A Pair New studies In the journal Nature, she looked at climate change in historical data and reached a conclusion that the registration heat recording last year – The first year to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius It was not a temporary coincidence, but a sign that the world goes beyond this long -term climate goal. The new year continued this upward path. Even when a natural cooling pattern called La Niña has recently been developed, January was able to be hotter than ever. Register 1.75 ° C Warmetic than the pre -industrial average.
One analysis of the two studies warned that the land entered. “A frightening new stageIt is a reflection of the language that has been used about 1.5 degrees Celsius since the International Climate Change Committee, and the United Nations -backed team wrote from prominent climate experts, An influential report in 2018 On the consequences of exceeding that threshold, which was estimated to happen in 2030. The headlines warned that the world was 12 years to avoid climate disaster. The young Swedish activist repeated the young Swedish Greta Thonberg And the actor Alexandria Okasio Cortez From New York. Is the world now on the edge of the disaster?
Mike Hwipe, professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, confirms that it is not. “There is no” edge of a cliff “that emanates from any of the scientific analyzes that were conducted on these thresholds.” “They, in many senses, are just arbitrary numbers that have been received because they are either correct numbers or half a true number.”
Holesi, who was studying the way people think about changing climate for decades Obsessed with global temperatures Understanding the reason for people’s interest in climate change in the first place: they care about how it affects their lives, not abstract readings of the heat scale. He also said that climate advocates should stop chasing A series of “Speed Dates” To try to move enthusiasm to achieve these goals.
Grrist talks with Hulme to learn more about how to determine these deadlines with reverse results and if there is a better way to talk about how to make progress in climate change. This interview has been intensified and edited for clarity.
Q: I wrote that the 1.5 C goal. “Drawing the world in a dangerous angle“What is exactly dangerous in that?
A. The danger of this goal is that it was always impossible to achieve – or 99 percent of impossible to achieve – 10 years ago. And everyone, as I think, which understands both the dynamics of the material climate system, as well as the dynamics of the global energy system, understood that – 1.5 has become a number of campaigns around which civil groups, activists and young businessmen are mobilized: “1.5 to survive.” It was interpreted as If 1.5 was violated, then the world moved to a completely different material condition was dangerous compared to 1.4 – or, and this came later, and it represents 1.5 “turning point” in the Earth system, which if exceed .
In both cases, he sows an atmosphere of fear. And if we exceed 1.5, the feeling that ends somehow, we have failed in our mission to manage the risk of climate change. And this, for at least some, will sow ridicule, disappointment, and loss of concentration. These are dangerous emotions. They do not help in clear thinking about the difficult policy of climate and energy.
Pictures of Lucy North / Palestinian Authority by Getty Earth
Q: I think the report is about 1.5 ° C in 2018, which is really related to this discussion. Do you think that this report had to be interpreted?
A. For me, it is a malicious way to think about this. There is no cliff edge on which the world’s climate or humanity will fall, whether it is 1.5, 2 or 2.5.
The film released a few years ago, Do not lookUse the idea of the asteroid that hit the planet as a planet to change climate. This is actually a very bad way to think about climate change. It is not something destroying the planet at any specific threshold. It is a gradual danger – a relative danger, in fact. Under the relative risks, I mean that one has to think about things that concern people in the broader context of their lives and aspirations for the future. It is relative to a pandemic, relative to a nuclear war between two great powers, relative to the destruction of the family of one through terrorism. So climate change is this type of problem. It is not like the asteroid.
Q: Most estimates said that 1.5 degrees Celsius will not happen until at least the early thirties. What do these new studies that show that the world may violate the 1.5 C goal now?
A. The interesting thing about this is, how can we explain 1.5? Climate scientists have always worked with an understanding that the climate is something that can only get a snapshot of more than 30 years. IPCC has recently moved to this 20 years. What these papers do is try to anticipate this. It is clear that we have not exceeded 1.5 degrees for 20 years. Nobody claims that. What these papers say is that, in fact, if we enter a 20 -year window from 2025 to 2045, we are now entering into this system where the average temperature in the world exceeds 1.5.
From a scientific point of view, the statistical point of view, these studies are fair. I think the danger is the way they are interpreted – that if we now reach 1.5, suddenly, a new category of climatic effects or weather extremism will reap around the planet.
Of course, the thing that will happen is, “Well, if 1.5 is now in the back mirror, what is in the front mirror now?” There will be a lot of work done to rebuild a narration for those people who believe that 1.5 was everything and end. There must now be a very important work in redistributing and reformulating what the future holds already, if it is no longer the standard.
Q: Is the problem in setting a deadline for climate change in part that it can stimulate work in the short term, but not in the long run?
A. I think this is a good way to distinguish, perhaps. Climate change is not something that can be arrested in the short term. It is something that will be managed in the long run. The first 1.5 was not in Paris in 2015 a good step. It may have some powerful power in the beginning, but it does not actually help us achieve long -term goals for what we need about climate change.
Global temperature is not something that anyone can control. At least in principle, if you classify this, you can think about certain energy systems-whether it is paid or efficient. There are no cranes that can control the global temperature, unlike the assumed crane of solar geology.
Q: The idea that we are depleting time to address climate change, or that the clock is a common metaphor. Do you think there is a better way to frame these efforts?
A. Well, yes. We know for a variety of reasons that make the world that depends on 85 to 90 percent depends on fossil fuels is a good world for the future for all types of reasons, and climate change is one of them. So one can actually structure some policies this around Carbon removal Provide incentives for accelerating carbon removal, but without placing the artificial final dates on it. It is not as if we did not reach the global energy system to 80 percent, 75, 70, 65 % on certain dates, we lost the battle in one way or another. At least we are going in the right direction.
Another way to this is to focus on sustainable development goals. In fact, the things that concern most people about the relationship that humans enjoy with their material environment and their social well -being are well captured United Nations sustainable development goalsEspecially for those who are exposed to some variable climate risk. They were appointed with a goal to achieve in 2030, so you can say that there is a deadline there. But the way we think about development is completely different from the way we think about the climate. Nobody says that we only face another five years to achieve any of these development goals. If we do not, we will continue for the next five, 10 or 15 years to reduce poverty, increase sanitation, and bring education, especially for women, even the criteria that people want.
