“Meat should not be served at COPs.” — Jo House, IPCC
“We are now at double the emissions allowed by the Paris Agreement — on track for 3 degrees, not 1.5.” — Patricia Espinoza, UNFCCC
“Buying an offset to fly here is absurd. It takes decades for a tree to grow enough to recoup that much carbon dioxide.” — Stephan Singer, CAN International
I am in the middle of things here at #COP25Madrid where delegates from nearly 200 countries are gathered to dicker and dither about whether they will save the world, or just let it get hotter.
Yesterday Greta Thunberg arrived and led a massive march through the center of the city and repeated her advice: unite behind the science.
Within the halls of the Blue Zone, I was doing exactly that, and my takeaways from those briefings by the Tyndall Centre, the Potsdam Institute, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the UK Met Office, and others, drawn mainly from a Future Earth presentation are these:
1. The world is not on track.
- Existing fossil-based infrastructure will, if operated during its full lifecycle, take the world above 1.5°C global warming.
- Greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase and the gap between current trends and agreed climate…