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The Week
December 15, 2015
by Jeff Spross
This weekend, international leaders managed to hammer out a deal for how to tackle climate change. And on the surface, it’s not hard to see why naysayers on both the left and right are declaring it a giant nothingburger.
The agreement is largely voluntary: 187 countries submit pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions based on what they think they can handle. Most of the structure the deal provides is a regular process to check in on progress and revise goals. If all the current pledges stick, global warming this century will likely be between 2.7 and 3.5 degrees Celsius — well above the 2 degrees Celsius threshold considered safe, and the agreement’s ideal goal of 1.5 degrees.
But maybe the most daunting thing is the sheer scale of the change the global economy must undergo to get warming under control.
Here, for instance, is Roger Pielke, Jr.’s analysis of how much global power consumption comes from green sources now, and where it needs to go by the last quarter of the 21st century:
