Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then.
Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen...We risk damages on a scale larger than the two world wars of the last century.
The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.
The US will increasingly see the risks of being left behind, and ten years from now they would have to start worrying about being shut out of markets because their production is dirty.
Rising sea levels will result in tens to hundreds of millions more people flooded each year with a warming of 3 or 4°C. There will be serious risks and increasing pressures for coastal protection in South East Asia (Bangladesh and Vietnam), small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, New York, Miami and London.
We run enormous risks and we know what kind of reductions of greenhouse gases are necessary to drastically reduce risks. Reducing emissions by half by 2050 is roughly in the right ballpark. It would bring us below 550 ppm.
I think that once people understand the great risks that climate change poses, they will naturally want to choose products and services that cause little or no emissions of greenhouse gases, which means 'low-carbon consumption.' This will apply across the board, including electricity, heating, transport and food.
We can look back through ice-core data and see over 800,000 years, relationships between carbon dioxide and the temperature of the world. So those people who deny the importance of climate change are just wasting their time. They're also being diversionary because if we don't act the risks are enormous.
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