Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumMichael Oppenheimer: Avoiding 2C Warming "Is Now Totally Unrealistic" - Atlantic
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Robinson Meyer: Youve been involved in climate diplomacy for a long, long time. How are you feeling today?
Michael Oppenheimer: Im upset and troubledas I rarely am, because Ive been involved in this issue for 35 years. Ive seen a lot of ups and downs, but this is the most discouraging. It is more discouraging than when George W. Bush withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. The reality is the clock has been ticking all this time, all those 35 years the clock has been ticking. And because the clock has been ticking, Earth is already a degree warmer than it would otherwise have been. We dont have much time to avoid the two degrees of warming that would destabilize ice sheets, entail extreme heatwaves, and potentially undermine food security. And this decision is just enough to push us over the edge, in my view. I think its totally unrealistic now to believe that we are going to meet that objective.
So in a personal way, for someone who has worked on the issue for decades, this more so than any other setback seems to indicate that its highly unlikely that we can make the two-degree goal. The Trump action pushed us over the edge, and basically Trump owns the responsibility now for this problem.
Meyer: Do you think its the withdrawal from Paris that puts us over the edge? The Trump administration has already cancelled a lot of the Obama programs to reduce greenhouse-gas emissionsare those more important?
Oppenheimer: No, I dont think that cancelling domestic regulations will actually have as much effect as the withdrawal from Paris could. I am fairly confident its going to discourage some other countries from being aggressive in their commitments.
The two do go together, theyre of a piece. But, in fact, there is no immediate effect from some of the work the Trump administration has done on the Obama regulations. Because you cant just cancel them. Even with the Clean Power Planif the courts determine that the plan is legal, then it will take years for the adminstration to rewrite it. They can slow down implementation but they cant eliminate it. Also, a lot of the momentum in the marketsin terms of low prices for solar and wind and natural gasis going to continue, no matter what. But the point is: All that wasnt enough. We needed a ratcheting up of stringency over the next decade or so, if we were going to be assured of meeting the U.S. plan under Parisand certainly if we wanted to go beyond that and keep decreasing emissions at an accelerating pace.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/oppenheimer-interview/529083/
hatrack
(59,587 posts)Oppenheimer: Let me frame that by saying that the speech Trump made yesterday was about Kyoto. He wasnt talking about Paris. I dont think there was one thing about Paris.
Meyer: Yeah, it was all these recycled arguments that actually applied to Kyoto.
Oppenheimer: Its all bullshit. Thats all there is to it. But it was a speech that could have been writtenthat was writtenby industrial lobbyists twenty years ago. It was the same criticism they made of Kyoto, but Paris is entirely different than Kyoto.
For Paris, the worlds countries had finally gotten together in a framework that had allowed each, in their own way, to find a pathway to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions. All the important emitters had indicated that they were willing and eager to do so. And that was a major step forward, because previouslyin the UN Framework Convention or the Kyoto Protocolsignificant emitters were either left out of having any obligations, or they clearly werent serious in what they would do. But [Paris] had a level of seriousness that was credible.
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)The most optimistic scenario I see is for a few humans to survive here and there in scattered hunter-gatherer bands, but civilization is toast.
hunter
(38,312 posts)It's an optimistic book too, not the usual post apocalypse survival grunge. (Of course you have to overlook a history where billions of people died and the oceans swallowed up major cities.) The people of Le Guin's world see our lost civilization as a bit of a mystery. Why did they destroy themselves?
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201901.Always_Coming_Home
pscot
(21,024 posts)I have never really believed in the efficacy of the Paris agreement. No doubt it was the best that could be achieved, given the economic forces leagued against it, but it seemed more like a noble gesture than an effective policy declaration; sort of a bureaucratic forlorn hope . What Trump has done has applied 440 volts to the climate "debate". He's not going to last much longer and push back against what he's done has created greater public awareness than the Paris agreement itself. Ten years from now will either the Trump Presidency or the Paris accords be reflected in the climate data? I'm skeptical. Climate change is like a train. It runs on rails. To change direction we need to lay new track. Paris doesn't do that, in my opinion.