So a 4 degrees future is something we must avoid. And that takes us back to 2 degrees – albeit with increasingly lower probabilities of achieving even this. What does 2°C imply for the wealthy parts of the world, the OECD countries? It means a 10% reduction in emissions every single year: a 40% reduction in the next few years and a 70% reduction within the decade. Such reductions are necessary if poor parts of the world are to have a small emission space to help their welfare and wellbeing improve. Despite the coherence of this analysis, I am repeatedly advised that such levels of mitigation are impossible. At the same time, living as a civilised global community with a 4 degrees rise would also seem impossible. In other words: the future is impossible! So what do we do? We have to develop a different mind-set – and quickly. The impossibility we face on mitigation may open us to conceiving of different futures – moving beyond the reductionist thinking of the twentieth century, and towards new ways of framing issues in the twenty-first century.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 20:35:52 +0000
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