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- ItemThe world’s biggest gamble(Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2016) Rockström, Johan; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Hoskins, Brian; Ramanathan, Veerabhadran; Schlosser, Peter; Brasseur, Guy Pierre; Gaffney, Owen; Nobre, Carlos; Meinshausen, Malte; Rogelj, Joeri; Lucht, WolfgangThe scale of the decarbonisation challenge to meet the Paris Agreement is underplayed in the public arena. It will require precipitous emissions reductions within 40 years and a new carbon sink on the scale of the ocean sink. Even then, the world is extremely likely to overshoot. A catastrophic failure of policy, for example, waiting another decade for transformative policy and full commitments to fossil‐free economies, will have irreversible and deleterious repercussions for humanity's remaining time on Earth. Only a global zero carbon roadmap will put the world on a course to phase‐out greenhouse gas emissions and create the essential carbon sinks for Earth‐system stability, without which, world prosperity is not possible.
- ItemMeasuring Success: Improving Assessments of Aggregate Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Goals(Chichester : John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2018) Jeffery, M.L.; Gütschow, J.; Rocha, M.R.; Gieseke, R.Long-term success of the Paris Agreement will depend on the effectiveness of the instruments that it sets in place. Key among these are the nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which elaborate country-specific goals for mitigating and adapting to climate change. One role of the academic community and civil society in supporting the Paris Agreement is to assess the consistency between the near-term action under NDCs and the agreement's long-term goals, thereby providing insight into the chances of long-term success. Here we assess the strengths and weaknesses of current methods to estimate the effectiveness of the mitigation component of NDCs and identify the scientific and political advances that could be made to improve confidence in evaluating NDCs against the long-term goals. Specifically, we highlight (1) the influence of post-2030 assumptions on estimated 21st century warming, (2) uncertainties arising from the lack of published integrated assessment modeling scenarios with long-term, moderate effort reflecting a continuation of the current political situation, and (3) challenges in using a carbon budget approach. We further identify aspects that can be improved in the coming years: clearer communication regarding the meaning, likelihood, and timeframe of NDC consistent warming estimates; additional modeling of long-term, moderate action scenarios; and the identification of metrics for assessing progress that are not based solely on emissions, such as infrastructure investment, energy demand, or installed power capacity.