Time to Review the 1.5 Track

9 June 2010

A group of workers were building a railway between two towns. Let’s say one town was called Copenhagen and the next was called Ourcommonfuture.  The railway workers had assembled sleepers (crossties) and rails and knew the distance between the towns.
After a while, some of the railway workers looked at the pile of construction materials. Some of them realised there weren’t enough materials,  and those who most needed to arrive at platform 1.5 in the next town asked for a review of the problem. If you were working on the new track would you agree to the review?
The railway bosses at Copenhagen 
secured broad agreement that we must limit warming to below 2 degrees, with a review of implementation and levels of ambition (considering 1.5) by 2015.  So ECO’s question for delegates is this: If your political leaders are serious about the Copenhagen goal and the review, then a workshop under SBSTA is a good way to focus on the technical and scientific challenges of reaching the goal, the size of the gap between current abatement efforts and the goal, and the opportunities to make up that shortfall.  These are essential elements to making sure we can reach our common future.

If there’s a gap in abatement effort, we need to understand it and find ways to resolve it. The world needs to look at sources like bunkers and industrial gases, consider the role of finance, and seek other ways to reduce the gap between what is happening and what needs to happen.  ECO looks forward to a 1.5 review coming out of SBSTA today. That will give us greater hope that we may reach the final destination.