Are You Ready for Some Paranoid? Insights into Policy, Politics and COP21 Climate Goals

You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there. —Yogi Berra

The global climate is not the only environment suffering from an abundance of hot air and inclemency. Consider the political/policy climate in the U.S., e.g., November elections, and abroad, e.g., Brexit, and the near-term impact of these socio-economic factors on national and international efforts to sufficiently slow the rate of climate change. As we ponder these events, we must remember that time is of the essence! Delayed implementation of emission reduction targets of even a few years can have an outsized negative impact upon the rate of warming.
There is a need both to speed up emission reductions and to factor in the most recent scientific evidence suggesting that Earth is tumbling towards 2°C faster than was thought by the COP21 delegates. It is increasingly suggested that if more ambitious targets are not soon set, the world will be facing the prospect of a 4 or more degree Celsius rise in temperatures by the end of the century. A prospect that, by all accounts, poses a climate catastrophe.

Complacency, therefore, is not an option. Contentment prompted by the positives will result in the failure to overcome the consequences of the negative, in a timely enough manner.

Click here to read the full article, originally published on August 1, 2016, by Renewable Energy World.

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