The sad, infuriating, truth about our climate target

David Roberts writes:

Humanity has put more CO2 in the atmosphere since 1988, when climate scientist James Hansen first testified to Congress about the danger of climate change, than it did in all of history prior.... No country has implemented anything close to the policies necessary to establish an emissions trajectory toward 1.5˚C; many, including the US and Brazil, are hurtling in the other direction. The sad truth about our boldest climate target, vox.com, 3 January

What can I say without repeating myself? Six years ago I wrote that Kyoto is doomed. and that Kyoto is a dog's breakfast. Four years ago I repeated myself, saying wrote that current climate policy is doomed to fail. 

Less irritatingly, I've asked whether we should be more concerned about the effects of climate change than on climate change itself. One of the advantages, as I see it, of a Social Policy Bond regime is that it perforce, and at the outset, specify very clearly what we want to achieve. As applied to the climate change problem we would express our policy goal as a combination of physical, social, biological and financial measures that must fall within specified ranges for a sustained period. Only then would holders of Climate Stability Bonds be paid out. These bonds would, in effect, contract out the achievement of our multiple climate goals to the private sector, leaving it to respond to our ever-expanding scientific and technical knowledge. Current policy is rigid and arrogant, in that it is based entirely on current science and assumptions about future trends. It cannot adapt to new knowledge. These are other reasons why it's failed to capture the public imagination and hasn't, in fact, achieved anything. We need a multitude of diverse, adaptive approaches to achieving our goals relating to climate change and its impacts - many of which will have nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions. Climate Stability Bonds would encourage them. Current policy, as well as being politically divisive, imposing extremely high upfront costs, and achieving nothing, will not.