Achieving a net-zero world opens the possibility of a net-negative one in which the temperature could fall. But it will do so from the far side of the 1.5°C goal.
Decrease the energy intensity of residentialReduce the carbon intensity ofDecrease emissions from agricultural productionReduce the share of unabated gasGlobal average temperatures are currently 1.0-1.3°C above the pre-industrial. According to Britain’s Met Office and the World Meteorological Organisation, there is a 48% chance that global average temperatures will be 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial in at least one of the next five years.
With that little time, even thinking outside the box offers very little hope. The box, here, is treating the whole issue as a matter of carbon budgets. There is more to climate than that. Some argue that acting really decisively on other warming factors, such as methane and soot, might change the picture. Such cuts are worth making, and indeed they sometimes pay for themselves. But the most aggressive pathways already factor in reductions in methane far steeper than any achieved to date.
If a solar-geoengineering programme would be slow to start, though, it would be much slower still to stop. Glitter in the sky would mask some of the temperature effects of higher greenhouse-gas levels, but it would not lower the levels themselves. The warming power of the gases remains the same. That means the only way to end a solar-geoengineering programme without precipitating a jump in temperatures is to bring the underlying greenhouse-gas levels down first.
But knowing that the 1.5°C milestone will fairly soon be in the rear-view mirror is leading people to take the idea more seriously than they have in the past. The Climate Overshoot Commission, assembled under the auspices of the Paris Peace Forum, is a group of 15 former heads of government, senior politicians and others chaired by Pascal Lamy, a one-time head of the World Trade Organisation. Taking the idea that the world will heat beyond 1.
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