s global negotiations
fail on emissions reductions, scientific advisers need to resist pressure to
fit the facts to the failure, warns Oliver Geden.
Writing in Nature,
Geden says, “Disenchantment has set in well ahead of the 21st Conference of the
Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) in Paris in December.
“Scientists, policy-makers and the public already accept
that progress will not be enough to keep global average temperature rise within
the 2 °C limit set at the 2010 UN climate summit.
“The negotiations' goal has become what is politically
possible, not what is environmentally desirable. Gone is a focus on
establishing a global, 'top down' target for stabilizing emissions or a carbon
budget that is legally binding.
“The Paris meeting will focus on voluntary, 'bottom up'
commitments by individual states to reduce emissions,” he writes.
