N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
On the eve of the UN climate conference COP30 in Brazil, the word was finally out: the one and a half degrees is dead, UN chief António Guterres, renowned for his apocalyptic climate statements (‘we are on the highway to hell’), announced in the Brazilian newspaper Sumauma and in the climate alarmist British newspaper The Guardian.
That global warming must be limited to no more than one and a half degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial period is the cornerstone of the international fight against global warming coordinated by the UN. The EU has also embraced the one and a half degrees target as the starting point for it ambitious and far-reaching Green Deal.
The fact that this objective has now been defeated is not news in itself. Within established climate science, the unfeasibility of it has been commonplace for some time, although most climate scientists did not dare to publish it. The only ones who still stubbornly cling to the illusory one and a half degrees are the political and administrative elites who have made a case for the associated policies, the activist climate movement and a few stray activist climate scientists here and there. They are unpleasantly surprised by the realism shown by the UN chief.
Guterres’ statement about the one and a half degrees was a blow to the organisers of the COP30. But of course, you can’t disappoint the nearly 60.000 (!) participants that went to Brazil, so the commitment has driven ‘near-universal climate action’ according to the UN. Whatever that will be...
