As the UN climate conference reaches the end of its first week, activists around the world are calling for stronger climate action
Bill McGuire, author of the recent book Hothouse Earth, has written for the Guardian this morning about his pessimism that the target of keeping global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
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. In this way, they can be used to justify inertia right up until it is too late. And this is exactly how fossil-fuel corporations, world leaders and others have used 1.5C – as a get-out-of-jail card to justify inaction on emissions. Continuing to present this temperature threshold as an attainable target provides a fig leaf for business as usual. Take it away, and this dangerous jiggery-pokery is exposed for all to see.
