By Greg Harman, San Antonio Organizer
In 2015, as part of the Paris climate accord, nearly every nation on earth agreed to work together to keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
This week, a report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stresses the importance of stopping global warming at 1.5 C while stating that we're “likely to reach 1.5C between 2030 and 2052."
Keeping the increase below 1.5C of pre-industrial levels will require a reduction in climate pollution of 45 percent of 2010 levels by 2030 and hitting net zero emissions by 2050.
In San Antonio, planners, consultants, and volunteers have been busy planning dueling reduction pathways for consideration by Mayor Ron Nirenberg and City Council in the spring of 2019—one for 2 degrees and another for 1.5 degrees.
But last month, Nirenberg cut the 2 degree plan, asking that members of the Climate Action & Adaptation Plan focus solely on meeting the 1.5 degree target.
With the nations of the world failing on climate, increasingly the heavy lifting is being left to the world's cities. This makes decisions like that of San Antonio's mayor all the more important. Together these choices have globe-spanning consequences, including, importantly, for the world's island inhabitants. For many of them, beating 1.5 may stave off an unwelcome eviction by rising seas.
At least one island is already losing the struggle with rising seas.
A Carterets Islander family crosses the Tulun Lagoon between islands. Image: Tulele Peisa
For the past few years, Ursula Rakova, executive director of Tulele Peisa, has been directing the relocation of her fellow Carterets Islanders to the “big island” of Bougainville, New Guinea, roughly 50 miles away.
Listen to Greg's conversation with Rakova at Deceleration.news.