Keeping warming below 1.5℃ is possible - but we can’t rely on removing carbon from the atmosphere

Kate Dooley.

This week international leaders are meeting in Marrakech to thrash out how to achieve the Paris climate agreement, which came into force on Friday. The Marrakech meeting is the 22nd Congress of Parties (or COP22) to the United Nation’s climate convention. One of the key goals of the agreement is to limit global warming to well below 2℃, and aim to limit warming to 1.5℃.

With global greenhouse gas emissions still rising, this is a daunting task. Numerous models, including recent research, suggest we will not be able to achieve this without removing large amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere later this century (known as “negative emissions”).

But scientists are becoming increasingly sceptical of the concept, as it may create more problems than it solves, or fail to deliver. Instead, we need to ramp up action before 2020, before even the earliest targets of the Paris Agreement.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a PhD candidate from the Australian German Climate and Energy College at the University of Melbourne, Kate Dooley,  “Keeping warming below 1.5 C is possible - but we can’t rely on removing carbon from the atmosphere.”