Mobilizing Against 1.5°C

The Paris text was a political fix in which grand words masked inadequate deeds. The voluntary national emission reduction commitments since Paris now put the world on a path of 3.4°C of warming by 2100, and more than 5°C if high-end risks including carbon-cycle feedbacks are taken into account.

The Paris outcome is a path of emissions continuing to rise for another fifteen years, when it was already clear that “if the 1.5°C limit should not be breached in any given year, the budget  already overspent today ”. David Spratt. Climate change: 1.5°C is closer than we imagine.

A highly ambitious coalition has formed to create the first municipal Climate Emergency Mobilization Department in Los Angeles, CA,  “to develop a vision and plan for a just transition of Los Angeles to zero emissions plus drawdown at emergency speed — by 2025,” says Margaret Klein Salamon, Founder and Director of The Climate Mobilization.

“We’re out of time,” said Los Angeles Council member Paul Koretz. “We can’t keep waiting around thinking, once it gets bad enough, we’ll have enough time to do something. … .We are out of time and need to act, quickly and boldly, like the very planet beneath our feet depends upon it. Like our home depends upon it. Because it does.”  Los Angeles Council members call for Climate Emergency Mobilization Department.

The Climate Mobilization is working with The Leap, a Canadian group founded by the author Naomi Klein and her husband Avi Lewis, and a coalition of leading Los Angeles environmental and social justice organizations to create the department which would “coordinate and supervise the transformation of America’s second largest city, act as an advocate for emergency climate mobilization, and ensure that all of the above is achieved under the principles of a just transition,” says Salamon.

“I think this may be an exportable/ scalable model, especially to cities where the Left is particularly powerful.”

[title type=”h2″]In all likelihood, a +1.5°C world is imminent.[/title]

In his most recent article  for ReNew Economy, Climate change: 1.5°C is closer than we imagine, Spratt evaluates several recent studies by climatologists which conclude that the world will almost certainly pass a +1.5°C threshold in less than ten years.

According to one of the reports which uses Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) for climate modeling, by 2026 the world will exceed the 1.5°C target.  (In Climate Impacts in Europe Under +1.5°C Global Warming)

“I think this is a critical challenge and should be a wake-up call for the organizers, activists, and groups calling for a multi-decade transition to zero emissions, or 100% renewables,” says Salamon. “We simply don’t have that kind of time! Advocating a 2050 timeline– or celebrating candidates who have embraced it- confuses the public about the urgency of the crisis.”

What most concerns Spratt is that “with few exceptions neither climate policy-makers nor climate action advocates have a reasonable understanding of the imminence of 1.5°C and its consequences.”

The climate crisis is causing immense human suffering and damage to the natural world. It threatens to destroy civilization and kill billions of people. Overcoming the climate emergency is the great moral imperative of our time.

I CALL ON THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO:
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• Commence a World War II-scale mobilization to restore a safe climate.
• End all greenhouse gas emissions within a decade and fund an effort to remove all excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
• Enlist the American people in a just mobilization that rebuilds our democracy and ensures good jobs, healthcare, and dignity for all.

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Sign the Pledge HERE