Stephen Lezak is a writer and researcher based at the University of Cambridge. He lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
Source: Giving Up on 1.5 Degrees Celsius Is a Luxury for the Rich | The New Republic
Climate circles have been quietly humming in the past couple of weeks with a dangerous conversation: that maybe, just maybe, it’s time to give up on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and switch instead to a goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius. At COP 27, the United Nation’s climate summit in Egypt, negotiations closed Sunday with a silver lining—that rich nations, including the United States, would help fund an institution to address climate-related loss and damage in vulnerable nations. But talk of switching to a two degrees Celsius goal target casts a pall over this news, suggesting that global commitments to climate justice remain patchy at best.
Like all forms of climate defeatism, giving up on 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) is a conversation for the privileged. 1.5 degrees of warming will already cause vast destruction to climate-vulnerable places, such as communities reliant upon coral reefs. For many more parts of the world, an additional 0.5 degree of warming is the difference between losing one’s house and losing one’s homeland. Unlike the climate threats faced by the wealthy, including the dignitaries and well-heeled NGO staff at COP27, the question for these communities boils down to survival, not strategy.
…The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate science, wrote a special report in 2019 on the importance (and difficulty) of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The report found that the additional half-degree of warming between 1.5 degrees and two degrees could melt an area of permafrost the size of Wyoming. It would increase the likely incidence of an ice-free summer in the Arctic Ocean from once per century to once per decade. The estimated loss of the planet’s coral reefs would increase from 70 to 90 percent, at the 1.5 degree mark, to more than 99 percent at the two-degree mark. The number of people experiencing climate-induced water stress could double.
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