Part two - getting the two degree limit onto the policy table
The EU and UK have been at the forefront of framing international mitigation agreements around the need to avoid warming the world by more than two degrees centigrade. The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WGBU) produced three reports at the behest of the German government. The reports came out in 1995, 1997 and 2003. These reports are widely cited as key markers in the two degree story. In a recent paper reconfirming the need to avoid two degrees of warming, two of the key authors of those reports admitted that they, ‘sometimes inadvertently, sometimes consciously’ introduced the concept into policy debates (Jaeger and Jaeger, 2010: 25). The authors go on to argue that it was these reports, and the efforts of the WBGU’s chairman, Joachim Schellenhuber, which convinced Angela Merkel to push for the two degree target at international conferences, triggering ‘the political process that fifteen years later led to the global visibility conferred to the 2° target by the G8, the Major Economies Forum, and the Conference of the Parties held in 2010 in Copenhagen’ (2010: 7). All three reports confirmed the commitment to the two degree limit though the first report used a different reasoning. To avoid dangerous climate change, the report argued, the warming should be limited so that we can be assured of the ‘preservation of Creation in its current form’ (WBGU, 1995: 13). This has been described as a ‘peculiar’ goal for a secular government to support (Tol, 2007: 246). More contentious is the claim that dangerous change can be avoided by not warming the Earth by more than 0.5 degrees centigrade over the highest levels of warming during the last interglacial. This baseline, with the additional 0.5, gives the two degree limit (WBGU, 1995: 7). This limit, through different reasoning, was reconfirmed in the two subsequent reports.
Part 3 of this story will provide a timeline of how the two degree dangerous limit claim made it from these reports to be the measure by which, according to the world's leaders at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, the world will be saved.
References
Jaeger, C. and Jaeger, J. (2010). Three views of two degrees. ECF Working paper, 2/2010.
Tol, R., (2007), Europe’s long-term climate target: A critical evaluation, Energy Policy, 35 424–432
WBGU, (1995), Scenario for the derivation of global CO2 reduction targets and implementation strategies. Statement on the occasion of the First Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Berlin,
WBGU, (1997), Targets for Climate Protection, 1997. A Study for the Third Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto.
WBGU, (2003), Climate Protection Strategies for the 21st Century. Kyoto and Beyond.
Part 3 of this story will provide a timeline of how the two degree dangerous limit claim made it from these reports to be the measure by which, according to the world's leaders at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, the world will be saved.
References
Jaeger, C. and Jaeger, J. (2010). Three views of two degrees. ECF Working paper, 2/2010.
Tol, R., (2007), Europe’s long-term climate target: A critical evaluation, Energy Policy, 35 424–432
WBGU, (1995), Scenario for the derivation of global CO2 reduction targets and implementation strategies. Statement on the occasion of the First Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Berlin,
WBGU, (1997), Targets for Climate Protection, 1997. A Study for the Third Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto.
WBGU, (2003), Climate Protection Strategies for the 21st Century. Kyoto and Beyond.