cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12214870
Not to be pedantic, but the target is a ten year trailing average. It’s a crime that we’ve likely hit it for a year or two already, and that shows how urgent the problem is but we’ve still got 5 years or so
Even worse carbon emissions haven’t yet peaked, much less started dropping, and way less quickly than they need to drop
Those extra years don’t mean anything though. It’s the target that matters. Just because 10 years was predicted doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want in this 10 years as long as it fixed right before that mark.
10 year average was the target definition. Not only does this not mean we can sit on our asses, but it also does NOT mean we have nine lives left
That’s not really how that works. The 2°C increase is a prediction of how average temperatures will increase based on already existing carbon in the atmosphere.
If we stop emitting today, the average temperature will still increase beyond 2°C and stay there unless there’s another force actively removing the CO2 from the atmosphere.
This isn’t “if we stop emitting today, we’ll peak at 2°C increase and then it’ll go back down” the 2°C prediction is a permanent increase to the average temperature.
The damage is done. Millions will likely die regardless of how much carbon we put out from this point forward. The fight now is to decrease the people that will die beyond that number.
