Short-term targets key to preventing 'intolerable' warming

Setting long-term emissions reductions targets to curb climate change is the wrong way to go, as it “gives the impression that there is time to delay,” according to scientists from the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) in Oslo, Norway.

“Failure to start curbing emissions soon comes with substantial risks, however,” the research team writes in the journal Nature. “It would inevitably require more substantial mitigation in later decades, which could prove to be technologically or politically unfeasible. It could also result in rapid warming at a rate above that which would allow ecosystems, plants and animals to migrate or adapt, thus violating a core objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — that mitigation should take place in a timeframe sufficient to enable adaptation.”

The CICERO scientists argue we need to set a cumulative emissions target of no more than 190 gigatonnes of carbon between 2010 and 2030 if we want to avoid an “intolerable” warming rate of more than 0.2 degrees C per decade.

“The implications are that global emissions must peak around 2015 and be cut by roughly half between the peak and the year 2030,” said Steffen Kallbekken, a scientist at CICERO and one of the paper’s co-authors.

He added, “Focusing climate policy on a long-term target, such as the EU 2-degree target, provides limited guidance for mitigation over the next few decades, and gives the impression that there is time to delay.”

The CICERO team recommends a carbon mitigation rate of 4 to 8 per cent per year, which far exceeds any previous reductions we’ve achieved.

“A short-term target provides clearer guidance on mitigation in the near term, limits potentially dangerous rates of warming, and allows easier inclusion of potent and toxic short-lived climate components,” Kallbekken said.

In addition to Kallbekken, other authors of the paper include Nathan Rive, Glen P. Peters and Jan S. Fuglestvedt.