We have 12 years to stop catastrophic climate change. The IPCC released their Global Warming of 1.5°C report which may well turn out to be one of the most important documents of modern times. The report describes the predicted effects of a 1.5°C increase in global temperature above the pre-industrial average versus a 2°C increase, written by 91 co-authors across 40 countries and backed by 6000 scientific references. Within the difference of 0.5°C is an exponential increase in danger to loss of life, crop yield reductions, sea level rises and population displacement. Vox have written about what this means in real terms.
The environmental scientists have urged that in order to keep the increase in temperature to 1.5°C, the world needs to reach net zero carbon emmissions by 2040. Here is an informative article from Quartz on the different negative emission technologies that can be used to help reach this goal. We have 12 years to stop catastrophic climate change.
