Negotiating text tabled at this year’s UN climate conference is calling for a target of “zero net emissions by 2050, in the context of equitable sustainable development,” and for “full decarbonization by 2050 and/or negative emissions by 2100,” The Guardian reported yesterday from Lima, Peru.
“It’s a rare thing when you can point to paragraphs in a United Nations climate negotiating text and feel they more or less match what most of the science says should become a reality,” Readfearn writes. “Yet in Lima on Monday, it happened.”
- The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
- You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
- The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
The more ambitious language in the negotiation text was put forward by Norway, the Marshall Islands, Sweden, and the six-member Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (IALAC), he explains.The document “is a very early version of what, over the course of the next 12 months, will morph into a new global deal to be signed in Paris.”
“The chances of this stuff staying in the text are down to all of our collective efforts in demanding that this stays in the text,” Greenpeace UK’s Ruth Davis told media. “This is not only civil society, but also progressive businesses who have to make their voices heard.”
“Which long-term goal survives the end of the day we won’t know until a year from now,” added Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But “there is a momentum building around this, and I think by Paris next year the chances of a strong goal staying in the agreement are probably much greater than they are right now.” (h/t to InsideClimate News)