Amid all the bad climate news flowing out of the Trump administration, you might have missed a quiet new consensus congealing in think tanks and big business. The targets set out by the Paris climate agreement, they argue—to limit global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)—are a lost cause. It’s time to prepare for a world warmed by at least three degrees Celsius.

Owing to “recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research report last month, they “now expect a 3°C world.” The “baseline” scenario that JP Morgan Chase uses to assess its own transition risk—essentially, the economic impact that decarbonization could have on its high-carbon investments—similarly “assumes that no additional emissions reduction policies are implemented by governments” and that the world could reach “3°C or more of warming” by 2100. The Climate Realism Initiative launched on Monday by the Council on Foreign Relations similarly presumes that the world is likely on track to warm on average by three degrees or more this century. The essay announcing the initiative calls the prospect of reaching net-zero global emissions by 2050 “utterly implausible.”

  • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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    11 days ago

    This already happened in conservative circles back circa 2016ish. Lots of Republicans got tired of being called morons for denying climate change, and pivoted to, “well it’s too late to do anything anyways”. This is just businesses adopting the same rhetoric, for the same reason; if it’s too late, there’s “no point” trying anything, so we should all just keep on polluting and let someone else fix it later.

    • Radiant_sir_radiant@beehaw.org
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      10 days ago

      Good point, and I agree that the “it’s too late anyway” rhetoric was probably just an easy excuse, though it looks a lot like it’s actually too late now to stop or even reverse global warming.

      This should of course not be an excuse to forgo damage control, but I think the situation has changed. Whether that encourages you to fight harder and try to save what’s left, or just give up and have fun while it lasts is entirely up to you…