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Brian Smith's avatar

I was going to suggest that, rather than continue to update on the urgent actions necessary to prevent 1.5C, you could better serve public discussion by explaining why preventing 1.5C is a worthwhile goal, especially compared to the costs of achieving the goal.

Even though the Paris Accord back in 2015 declined to officially adopt 1.5C as the commitment, most public discussion since seems to assume that this is the target, that it "must" be met, and that we face inevitable catastrophe if we don't. Yet, I'm not aware of any scientific data supporting this idea, or even any plausible scientific claim.

Then, I got to the end of your column, "Every tenth of a degree matters, and the faster we can get emissions to zero the more we can reduce the long-term damages of climate change." I guess this is all one can say. But it doesn't justify any particular level of effort to achieve any particular reduction in emissions.

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Zeke, I'd love to hear your take on whether AI can help us figure out solutions that the mass of humanity will accept and actually enact. Do you think that's something we should pursue?

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