Too late for two degrees? Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers

Price Waterhouse Coopers released a report showing that the world needs to reduce carbon intensity by 5.1% per year from now until 2050 in order to stay below a 2C rise.  They point out that not since 1950 has the world achieved that in any single year. We have to achieve it every year for the next 39 years (and every year we delay makes the job much harder). The 2011 rate was 0.8%. Even if we double that rate to 1.6% we will still be on track to achieve a civilisation-destroying 6C rise.

ClimateProgress has a good post about it.  They also have a great post summarising the latest science on what climate impacts we can expect on our current emissions trajectory (in short: the impacts are so severe that it's likely our global civilisation will collapse, along with about half of the world's biodiversity). Anyone who thinks that they or their loved ones can somehow escape what's coming is deluded. Life will be hellish for all of us, no matter where we live or how resilient/self sufficient we think we can become.

Also, good article in the Guardian about the silence of the US presidential candidates on climate change during the campaign (though Obama did finally mention it in his victory speech), and the corrupting influence of fossil fuel money on US politics (which has obvious parallels with us here in Australia).

It's hard to convey the enormity and urgency of the climate crisis we face. There's very little time left to avert a global disaster that will last 100s, if not 1000s of years. Global temperature lags CO2 levels (by about 30 years apparently), which means that even if we stopped all pollution today we would still get more warming for decades to come. We can't wait until the signs get worse, because by then we will very likely be locked into irreversible runaway climate change - we need to act now.

The world can fix this, but it will take literally millions of ordinary people demanding urgent top-down action. We can't wait for politicians/big business to sort this out.

Politics/big business is blinded by pathological greed (they gave us the GFC) - they got us into this mess.

So please, if you're not already involved in climate action, start getting involved now. The future of the world depends on you.