We Know What We Have To Do
Nothing in the new IPCC report is particularly surprising. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less of a gut punch to see it all spelled out.
The study shows that there’s basically no scenario—not even global eco-socialism implemented tomorrow—where the scientists are sure we can avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the middle of the century, and that level of warming, a major 2018 IPCC report showed, will be absolutely brutal.
But just as important is another conclusion: If we rapidly and urgently decarbonize every sector of the economy, we can push temperatures back downward by the end of the century and avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
“What we’re doing by acting aggressively, soon, is making sure that these next two decades of warming may be some of our last, and we are reserving the right to potentially begin cooling globally later this century,” Kim Cobb, report co-author and a coral researcher at Georgia Tech, said on Sunday’s press call.
If we want to reach that global cool-off, we don’t have time for empty rhetoric or half-measures.
“The most concerning thing is just how little time is left to act if we want to stabilize temperatures,” said Flato.
