Prof. Sir Bob Watson, former head of the UN climate body and a leading British climate scientist has said that the target to limit global warming to 1.5C will be missed.
Watson’s warning comes amidst a summer of extreme heat for Europe, China and the US.
Recall that the world agreed to try to limit the temperature increase due to climate change to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels at a UN conference in Paris in 2015. That target has become the centrepiece of global efforts to tackle climate change.
The UN had said that passing the limit will expose millions more people to potentially devastating climate events and climate scientists have been warning governments for years that they are not cutting their countries’ emissions quickly enough to keep within this target.
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In the interview aired on Thursday, Watson is currently Emeritus Professor of the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, said “I think most people fear that if we give up on the 1.5 [Celsius limit] which I do not believe we will achieve, in fact I’m very pessimistic about achieving even 2C, that if we allow the target to become looser and looser, higher and higher, governments will do even less in the future.”
Watson’s comments although candid were supported by Lord Stern, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, later on Thursday during an interview with BBC’s WATO programme.
Watson, who also previously worked at the UN, Nasa, UK’s Department of Environment and the US White House, said: “I think 1.5 is probably out of reach even if we accelerate quickly now, but we could bring it back if we start to bring down the cost of negative emissions and get better at negative emissions. Negative emissions means direct air capture of carbon dioxide.”
Story was adapted from BBC.
