After COP26, Climate Goals Are on Life Support
Billy Pizer, RFF's Vice President for Research and Policy Engagement, shares his two cents with Quartz on the feasibility of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
Scientific uncertainty about the atmosphere’s exact sensitivity to greenhouse gases leaves open the possibility that 1.5 may already be in a coma. But mounting public pressure—fueled by the deepening climate crisis itself—could wake it up.
“1.5 stretches credibility,” said William Pizer, a former US climate negotiator and current vice president for policy engagement at Resources for the Future, a think tank. “But 2 C is really possible, and just a few years ago it really wasn’t.”
