That’s the IPCC estimate assuming we take urgent global action now. But instead of taking urgent global action, Brazil are about to open the rain forest to agr

That’s the IPCC estimate assuming we take urgent global action now. But instead of taking urgent global action, Brazil are about to open the rain forest to agri-business; the White House does not believe it is possible to stop climate change and is rolling back environmental protections and pulling out of the Paris Accord (which was nowhere near enough in the first place, and which none of the other signatories were achieving anyway); and Europe is distracted by Brexit and demagoguery. China are looking more serious, but are also pissing in the wind at current levels of effort. The IPCC report is in any case probably extremely optimistic on the impact of releasing the methane stored in permafrost. That could catapult temperatures up far too quickly for the ecosystem to adapt to, or even humanity to adapt to, even if we science very, very hard. So 1.5 degrees is what we get if we put in unprecedented effort that none of the important countries are showing any signs of doing, and also if we use probably-optimistic models. At least 4 degrees is more likely on current trajectory, and that is absolutely terrifying. North of that we get into the end of civilisation in anything like its current form. Also, arguably the most important gains of the last decades are from what used to be called the developing world dragging itself out of poverty. A disproportionate share of the economic and human cost of climate collapse will fall on those countries. Which doesn’t seem very fair because they haven’t had enough time to significantly contribute to or benefit from burning hydrocarbons. It is quite frustrating because doing what we need to do to stop all of this is relatively simple, if quite difficult, is basically inevitable anyway because renewables are increasingly cheaper than fossil fuels, and will make the world better in all sorts of other ways. Get your shit together humanity.