“INTERNATIONAL agreements don’t matter to mayors,” reckons Michael Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York. City bosses are busy enough dealing with problems on their own patch, and are much closer to their electorates than national politicians are. You might expect, therefore, that they would be paying little attention to the international climate talks currently being held between national leaders in Paris under the auspices of the UN. In fact, hundreds of mayors are in town—and striking side deals of their own.
More than 180 countries are gathered in Paris, and their pledges, it seems increasingly clear, will not hold global warming to the maximum 2°C rise above the level in pre-industrial times that politicians from around the world have set as their aim. The science behind this limit is hazy. Once chosen as a safety-barrier intended to save the world from catastrophic warming, research increasingly suggests that vast damage will occur long before it is breached. And breached it almost certainly will be. What is needed is to aim for “zero emissions”, says Malte Meinshausen, a scientific advisor to the German Environmental Ministry. But...Continue reading
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