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“A Miracle Will Occur” Is Not Sensible Climate Policy
07 December 2023
James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato
The COP28 Chairman and the United Nations Secretary General say that the goal to
keep global warming below 1.5°C is alive, albeit barely, implying that the looser goal
of the 2015 Paris Agreement (to keep warming well below 2°C) is still viable.
We find
that even the 2°C goal is dead if policy is limited to emission reductions and plausible
CO2 removal. IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which advises
the UN)
has understated global warming in the pipeline and understated fossil fuel
emissions in the pipeline via lack of realism in the Integrated Assessment Models that
IPCC uses for climate projections.
Wishful thinking as a policy approach must be
replaced by transparent climate analysis, knowledge of the forcings that drive climate
change, and realistic assessment of policy options. The next several years provide a
narrow window of time to define actions that could still achieve a bright future for
today’s young people. We owe young people the knowledge and the tools to
continually assess the situation and devise and adjust the course of action.
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