While much of the muttering at COP 27 in Egypt has been about how to meet the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees C over pre-industrial levels, some leading climate scientists are already claiming the death of that goal.
Writing in the opinion section of The Guardian, Bill McGuire of the University College of London (UCL) says that “voices can be heard at Cop27” claiming that 1.5⁰C “is achievable. In theory, this is correct, in the same way that someone tied to railway tracks in front of a speeding express train can, in theory, save themselves. Both are delusional.”
The 2015 Paris COP 21 saw adoption of the 1.5C goal, pledging actions and policies to meet that target. Writes McGuire, “To say that progress made since has proceeded at a snail’s pace would be an insult to molluscs. Instead, we are in a position whereby, to achieve this, emissions would need to fall 45% in the next seven and a bit years – when they are actually on track to rise by 10%, compared with 2010 levels. Seven years ago, the 1.5C target seemed a sensible one. Now, it is at best, irrelevant, and at worst, dangerous. It has to go.”
McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and the author of Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide. He writes, “In retrospect, it is clear that having a specific target, rather than fighting to stop every fraction of a degree in temperature rise, has actually been counterproductive. There is a perennial problem with targets, and that is that they are always still reachable – until they aren’t.”
The failure to achieve the 1.5C limit doesn’t mean the worst is inevitable, says McGuire. “The failure of the Cop process to avert the arrival of Hothouse Earth conditions doesn’t mean that it’s all over, that the battle is lost. Far from it. Above and beyond 1.5C, each and every 0.1C rise in global average temperature that we can forestall becomes critical; every ton of carbon dioxide or methane we can prevent being emitted becomes a vital win.”
At the same time, CNET commented, “The climate pledges made by nations at last year’s COP26 conference felt like a positive step in the right direction, but there’s very little doubt that the average temperature rise on Earth will exceed the 1.5 degree mark in the coming decades — an ‘overshoot’ scenario — before potentially coming back down by the end of the century.”
Also, New Scientist asked, “Scientists say it is still theoretically possible to limit global warming to 1.5°C, but realistically that now seems practically impossible. Should we admit our failure and double down on holding warming below 2°C?”