Sobering and required reading on *the* big story from last week nytimes.com/2018/03/22/cli…
The more I think about it the more troubling the return to rising global greenhouse emissions is, and not just for the obvious reasons.
Yes, it eats into the time we have available to decarbonise, which is already a single career span endeavour, remember businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3…
But it's worse than that - much worse. As long as emissions were flat or falling the narrative that a tipping point had been reached offered real succour to environmentalists. The whole #climateoptimism narrative is predicated on this progress.
And now emissions are rising again. It may be a blip, there are good reasons to hope it is. But they are still rising. And the consequences of that could be catastrophic.
The need right across the political and business spectrum to redouble efforts, to scale all the technologies and projects that helped hold emissions down for three years has never been more explicit.
And yet, the sense of political priority is, if anything, worse than it was in 2015 when the Paris Agreement was signed. There are great pockets of progress, but the big economy-transforming projects remain rare or underpowered. In part, because of this: businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3…
It is hard to know what the answer is, beyond same again, but more and better. By that reckoning 2020, the year Paris comes into full effect and Trump, hopefully, leaves the White House is absolutely key.
Every politician, business exec, and campaigner who cares about the future of the planet and the prosperity of the global economy needs to now be focusing everything on making sure 2020 is a true tipping.
Because if by the early 2020s global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising we are facing the very real risk of a world of climate trauma and rolling geopolitical crisis that makes our current problems look like a gentle prologue.
It's not a great thought to start the week with, but it is what it is and there's not much point pretending otherwise...
Short addendum to this thread. @Shell has released its Sky scenario today detailing how we could yet meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Full story here: businessgreen.com/bg/feature/302… BG+
In some ways it is really encouraging (it says Paris goals are still achievable), but it is also absolutely explicit that it requires a step change in terms of current political engagement, social engagement, and tech deployment.
We need many more countries to follow Sweden and set net zero emission goals for 2045, EVs dominating global markets by 2030, a hydrogen revolution, and much more besides - and all before anyone aged under 40 retires...
Credit to Shell for talking in these terms, but it also stresses that this is not its business plan. Which begs the question, why not? 
There are a handful of years to turn around an emissions trajectory that is now inching stubbornly upwards once again. Again, not a comforting thought to start the week with, but it is what it is.
