- This Climate Policy Could Save the Planet
Here’s a smart way for us to limit carbon emissions and keep global warming below 2 °C.
International climate-change negotiators are focused on keeping global warming at or below 2 °C above historical levels—the limit beyond which the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the consequences of global warming will become catastrophic. But even though negotiators may have finally made some progress on agreements to reduce emissions, there is a big problem: we’re already about halfway to the 2 °C threshold. In October, for example, the warmest October in 135 years of record-keeping, the global average temperature was 1.04 °C warmer than the preindustrial reading. It was no aberration: 2015 is almost certain to have been the warmest year on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2014.
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