Renewable Revolution

THE DAILY IMPACT

CHRONICLING THE CRASH OF THE INDUSTRIAL AGE


By Tom Lewis | October 10, 2018 | Climate

There’s a dumb old joke about an optimist who falls off a 40-storey building and is heard saying, as he passes the 20th floor, “Well, nothing bad has happened yet.” We have met the optimist, and he is us.

The optimist is, for example, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Policy, which this week issued a report to a world that has not yet begun to implement the agreed-upon changes needed to hold global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Two years after that target was set by 195 nations, after years of negotiations, at the Paris climate agreement, the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, the primary drivers of climate change, are still rising. There is no hope of limiting climate change to two degrees. But it would be so much nicer, says the IPCC now, to hold the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In other words: I started trying to lose 40 pounds a year ago, I haven’t lost any weight at all, so now I’ve decided to try to lose 50 pounds. Continue reading → Or hear Podcast 🔊