David Victor Quoted in Nature News
Missed 2050 climate targets will reduce long-term options
01/12/2010
Jeff Tollefson,
Nature.com
After last month's United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen failed to produce a binding agreement to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, the outlook still isn't getting any better.
A modelling study suggests that the massive mobilization necessary to halve greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 is "barely feasible" unless global development patterns shift radically. Heroic efforts would still be required in the latter half of the century to cap the global temperature rise at 2° C by 2100, and even then we have a 50/50 chance of missing that target.
That's one scenario, perhaps the most likely, explored by new work looking at how emissions targets for the middle of the century feed into longer-term goals for capping global temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
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David Victor is director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, based at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies.
Click here to visit David Victor's website.
