MEDIA coverage of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report focused more on climate change apocalypse than what is required to contain warming below 1.5℃. Yet the IPCC was specifically asked the different ways in which such a temperature rise could be limited rather than guess what such it might look like.
The overview says it will need “rapid, far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban infrastructure, and industrial systems with deep emissions reductions in all sectors.......a synchronised transformation of technology, economy, and society of a scale and character never seen in human history".
The crucial consideration is whether the cost of that reduction is proportional to the benefit and its hard to believe the policy options available to stop "global warming" won't be more harmful than the climate change they set out to mitigate. The conclusion: It’s possible but it won’t happen.
Rev Dr John Cameron,
10 Howard Place, St Andrews.
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