Submission Statement:

A new UN report predicts warming this century will fall between 2 and 3 degrees — this is a dreadful miss from our 1.5 degree goal that would have allowed us to continue our lives with relative normalcy, but also much much lower than the 4-5 degree apocalypse that was heralded even just a few years ago: “we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.” Neither normal nor apocalyptic - the future lies, frustratingly, somewhere in the middle.

This article also makes the case that we are hurtling rapidly towards a decarbonized future: renewables prices have plummeted over the last decade at an astonishing, almost miraculous, rate. Investment in green energy has officially outpaced investment in dirty energy for the first time this year — one paper estimates that a faster decarbonization process stands to make the world “trillions of dollars richer by 2050.”

At the same time, Wallace-Wells also makes the case that as amazing as this progress is, it’s simply not enough. A third of Pakistan is underwater. Hundreds died due to heat waves in Pheonix alone this summer - thousands in the UK, Spain and Portugal. “Even if temperature rise is limited to two degrees….the extremes might be what you would have projected for four or five.”

He echoes the warning of the IPCC last February: we were focusing too much on near-term amelioration rather than “transformational adaptation” and relocation - especially as “hard limits to adaptation have already been reached in some ecosystems” even as we seem to continue to populate them (cough Florida).

“What will the world look like at 2 degrees? Disruption and upheaval at every level. Suffering and injustice. Innovation too…and some new prosperity.”

Edit: I see no one is going to bother to actually read the article lol