The 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement is no longer viable

ant6n

"New goal: not exceed 2°C, then bring the temperature back down to 1.5°C" It kind of feels people have given up. I'm working on a startup that aims to replaces aviation (the most difficult emissions to avoid) with night trains in Europe (currently economically uncompetitive). It's an obvious impact story, but impact appears to be "out".

hugodan

From the report: "Under current policies, only six G20 members (China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation, South Africa and Türkiye) are assessed as likely to achieve their unconditional 2030 targets, while the assessment of the European Union is inconclusive. Overall, this suggests limited progress in narrowing implementation gaps across the G20." "All G20 members except Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America have new NDCs with mitigation targets for 2035."

mrmlz

Yes lets do it by continuing to outsource the pollution to China and deindustrialize Europe. Cut the nuclear, add the imported solarpanels and experience the joy of 10x electricity prices. Blame the consumer for not turning the kettle off during peak hours and make sure you give tax breaks to Google and BiGData to open a couple more datacenters that use more power than a average city. Oh, ban combustion engines, fuck up every batteryfactory by thinking its enough to buy the Make-Your-Own-Battery-Kit on Aliexpress. Wow such strategy.

vrganj

We are burning the only planet we have in a contest to be king of the ashes. Who gives a fuck whether the US or China win the AI race if they both burn tons of hydrocarbon to get there? Either way, the race itself will fuck the planet up worse than either victor would. Same about all the dumb wars of conquest, Ukraine, Iran. Who gives a fuck over those lines on a map if the map itself is on fire? All the burning of oil depots, all the explosives used are all an assault on humanity itself, not just on whatever state construct. I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter. Dumb, self-important squabbles that destroy the material basis for a species' survival in an attempt to gain control instead of cooperation.

233mhz

When AGI is here we just have to ask how to fix it :)

brunorro

The question is... Was it ever viable? I remember, around 2016, a european climate scientist saying that he had to fill up more forms and prove every experiment in the most strict way. The justification was that their conclusions could have economical repercussions. The results of their experiments were always a few years late because of that. Welcome to the "absence of economical repercussions" world.

js8

Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done. Many ecosystems and species will be lost, and many of the feedbacks (for example arctic sea ice) have hysteresis in them which will not get us to the same state even though nominally our temperature will be lower again. And because of hysteresis, larger reduction in CO2 might be required to get us back to 1.5 degrees. That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.

torben-friis

>“Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C raises the risk of irreversible changes including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts,” the report states. The mention to coral systems, from an ignorant perspective, seems weirdly specific to me. Kinda like "civilization will collapse and the price of sweaters will go up". Does their disappearance have indirect consequences I'm not aware of?

yyyk

We could always make more war in the Middle East (and Europe) and then 1,5°C would be totally viable. /s Seriously now: Attempts to cut fossil fuel supply are worthless unless done en masse and in big scale - any single country doing it will just spur investment in another country. Since the world will not come to a truly binding agreement, the only thing that can be truly regulated is demand which can be regulated locally without necessarily increasing demand elsewhere. The big new ticket is data centers, which strongly tend to use fossils due to SLAs and regulations. This can be fixed by new regulations, but only if people act now before the new approvals and builds are done.

riobard

I'm sure temperature ceiling will just work like debt ceiling.

shevy-java

To be fair: setting it as a temperature range was very stupid from the get go. Also, to not consider the economic impact, was also stupid, and the CO2-tax is also beyond idiotic since it creates a fake-economy where people buy the right to pollute. That runs counter to the idea of green energy. I think one should abandon the Paris Agreement and label it as the failure as it was. However had that does not mean that green energy should be abandoned. There need to be more incentives towards green energy (see how Putin uses gas as means to amplify his genocidal activity against Ukrainians). Meaning, companies that verifiably transition towards more renewable, need to get positive incentives to go towards that and maintain it at all times. The CO2 tax should also be eliminated without compensation. And there also has to be more realism - it makes no sense to cut down an economy, producing more unemployment in the process. It has to be a cohesive unit.

pelagicAustral

I would not say people have given up. The problem is that this search for saving the planet and humanity all together is hard to understand for the common folk, much in the same way other banners that have been imposed on people in the past 2 decades. Common people want to go to work and know that they have a working transport system, that they can walk in between a few streets and feel safe, that they can have enough money for a mortgage and to feed themselves and their families. None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising. When the security of the grid on a once thought-of super-power like UK is constantly put in question. The common people doesnt care much about these topics and explanations because they don’t have time for it, because they do still need to get on with life. It’s generally youth and retirees the ones gluing themselves to the pavement, have you noticed? whats in common in these two groups is they can both still afford to be idealists. Then you turn on the TV and see how much damage is being done to the environment in other regions, and so, why do I need to suck it up in my jumper all winter then? Why am I the one using paper straws that break before I finish my drink? This whole thing was always a tough sale, but it’s gotten even harder in the current political climate.

dev_l1x_be

Wanting to control the temperature is the worst kind of thing we want.

GardenLetter27

It's hilarious that the EU is busy putting tariffs on electric vehicles and blocking nuclear power... but they still call it an "emergency".

andrewstuart

Since Covid no one seems to care that much any more. Even the Greens party in Australia is more interested in social issues than environment.

ckx

Can anyone provide a list of bad things that have happened because of climate change, genuinely curious and I want to learn from the experts here!

disorderly_expe

There was a book on the overshoot nonsense a few years ago (literally called Overshoot) that talks about the make believe story of carbon capture and how during the negotiations for CAP in the 2000s and 2010s those were included as otherwise the US would have agreed to no plan at all. And even if something like removing carbon at scale through forestry, burning, and co2 capture was ever so viable who would pay for that. That only works with emissions trading (which every other month gets watered down because muh energy bills, muh aviation cost, etc) or some “energy costs nothing” mythological tech. We are fucked and while there are many who care the vast majority of people oscillates between too dumb, too selfish, and too manipulated to ever be willing to give up today’s comforts for a happier tomorrow.

gyosko

I would build some thousands of datacenters and ask AI how can we solve this problem, I'm sure this will fix the problem.

tito

For those who want the Emissions Gap Report the article is based on, here's the Executive Summary: https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/80aaab0e-2a... And full report: https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/8819b586-8d... I recommend putting the full report in your favorite LLM and asking questions as a start!

LightBug1

We will continue extracting absolutely everything we can from Earth, at whatever the cost ... with the hope that technology will one day save us from our weakness. And, yes, technologyy may "save us", but there are many different definitions of what that will look that ... some may be horrendous for the majority, but none of them will inconvenience those making the most significant decisions.