Planet ‘must race to prevent 2C global temperature rise’

THE planet faces irreversible climate change if drastic action is not taken to prevent an increase in temperature of 2C.

Environmental campaigner George Monbiot says a chain reaction could be set off if the temperature rose by that much.

“This is the critical level we have to try and prevent if we are to stop the worst effects of climate change,” said Mr Monbiot, who is also a columnist for British newspaper The Guardian.

He said a number of major events could happen with a 2C rise, including:

The “trigger point” for the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheets and west Antarctic ice sheets, leading to very high sea levels.

Increasing drought in Africa and southern Europe, with “major humanitarian” consequences .

‘Positive feedback processes’, like the melting of the west Siberian peat bog, releasing methane gas, causing more melting, resulting in the release of more methane, in a cycle.

Mr Monbiot said that, in such a scenario, a rise of 2C would inevitably lead to a rise of 3C.

The campaigner welcomed the European Commission’s new energy policy, but said it did not go far enough.

“It’s definitely the sort of direction they should be going in, but I think they ought to be going there quite a lot faster and quite a lot further.

“They’re talking about a 20% cut by 2020, which is fine, but actually we need to see more like a 50% cut by then if we are to have a high chance of preventing 2C of global warming.”

He said doing the right thing would not be easy for governments.

“The case has to be made long and hard by national politicians; we need to take much more drastic measures than the ones we’re taking at the moment and it has to be said that so far they’ve behaved in a rather spineless fashion. That applies to some extent to the UK, but it applies even more to Ireland, where it has to be said that the performance of the national government has been pretty disgraceful.”

He said governments, when dealing with past crises, told people sacrifices had to be made.

“Now the only sacrifices we have to make are to stop taking our holidays in Florida, Bahamas, and Thailand, and to install energy efficient light bulbs and a few other measures like that.

“Have we become so soft and so selfish that we can’t even make those sacrifices in order to prevent what could be an existential crisis.”