A Hard Deadline: We Must Stop Building New Carbon Infrastructure by 2018
In only three years there will be enough fossil fuel-burning stuff—cars, homes, factories, power plants, etc.—built to blow through our carbon budget for a 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise. Never mind staying below a safer, saner 1.5°C of global warming. The relentless laws of physics have given us a hard, non-negotiable deadline, making G7 statements about a fossil fuel-phase out by 2100 or a weak deal at the UN climate talks in Paris irrelevant.
“By 2018, no new cars, homes, schools, factories, or electrical power plants should be built anywhere in the world, ever again unless they’re either replacements for old ones or are carbon neutral? Are you sure I worked that out right?”
I asked Steve Davis of the University of California, co-author of a new climate study.
“We didn’t go that far in our study. But yes, your numbers are broadly correct. That’s what this study means,”
Davis told me over the phone last fall.
Read more: This Changes Everything