Here's How a Real Leader Talks--Two Degrees is Too Much

5 November, 2009 - 08:57 — Bill McKibben

Rajendra Pachauri is a hero. The Bush administration--and reportedly Exxon Mobil--wanted him at the helm of the UN's  climate science body, the IPCC, because they thought the Indian-born scientist would be more pliable than his predecessor. He turned out to be just as concerned about what the data was showing, and a couple of months ago he flat-out said it: the old science won't do, 350 is the obvious new target. He caught some grief for being undiplomatic, but he hasn't backed down an inch. Here he is interviewed in today's issue of E360, the Yale University online environmental magazine:

e360: You attracted widespread attention some months ago when you said, as an individual, not as chairman of the IPCC, you supported calls to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations at a level of below 350 parts per million. What led you to take that position, and knowing that it would be controversial, why did you choose to go public with that?

Pachauri: Well, you know, I’ve been getting increasingly concerned at several observations all around. If you look at sea level rise, and this is something that you can take out of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, even with a 2 degree increase in temperature, we will get sea level rise on account of thermal expansion alone, of 0.4 to 1.4 meters. So let’s say we were to end up in the middle of that range, you’re talking about at least 2 feet of sea level rise. Now if that happens, it’s bad news for several parts of the world. The Maldive Islands, which are barely a meter above sea level, most of those islands, extensive areas of Bangladesh, a country of 160 million people, and there are other regions, including parts of the U.S., that will be completely devastated. And therefore even the 2-degree limit that we’re talking about, which corresponds to say about 450 parts per million, is pretty bad news. I just couldn’t keep my eyes closed to that reality.

 

And you see so much happening all around. Look at the melting of the glaciers all over the world. What are the implications of that? Look at the impacts on agriculture. We ourselves in the IPCC have projected that as early as 2020, we would see certain African countries suffering a decline of 50 percent in agriculture, and these are countries that have massive malnutrition, hunger all around. And if they have a decline of 50 percent, what does that mean? We are asking for disaster.

 

As a human being, I just couldn’t keep quiet in the face of all this overwhelming evidence. I know it’s probably not right for me to take a position such as this, but on the other hand, I think it would be totally immoral on my part not to take a position, so I came out and said so.


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