Is the dangerous limits discourse dangerously limited?

A complex flora of global policy/science hybrid institutions has arisen over the last twenty years in response to concerns about the impact of human influences on the climate. The goal of these institutions is not to stop climate change, but to ensure there is not too much climate change. Too much climate change is defined as dangerous climate change. To prevent dangerous climate change it is first necessary to define what is meant by dangerous climate change and secondly to develop international regulatory regimes which will ensure that warming does not exceed this dangerous level.

The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) formalised the idea of a single, global dangerous limit to climate change, but did not seek to quantify that limit. The European Union, since the mid 1990’s, has taken the lead in promoting two degrees celsius of warming above the pre-industrial average as the dangerous limit.[i] This end point target has come to dominate the policy debate.[ii] What little discussion there has been regarding the validity of this target has largely focussed on the relationship between atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and warming, rather than the two degree target itself.

However, it is possible to identify some challenges to the two degree dangerous limit discourse. Many actors from the global south have argued for a 1.5 degrees celsius limit rather than two degrees. Mike Hulme at the University of East Anglia has questioned whether there is such a thing as a dangerous limit to climate change, arguing that all climates yield danger.[iii]  Danny Harvey has sought to demarcate dangerous impacts from dangerous interference with the climate, and through the use of probabilistic calculations has concluded that dangerous interference with the climate has already begun.[iv]

Whilst researching my PhD I have heard the dangerous limit calculations described as ‘meaningless’, and a ‘deceit’. These accounts are from prominent agents with a long involvement in the climate debate.  Yet the goal of reaching an agreement on cuts needed to avoid more than two degrees of warming still dominates the international climate policy agenda. Reporting on the recent failed UN climate change talks in Bonn, the BBC news website quoted Yvo de Boer, the outgoing executive secretary of the UNFCCC, as saying

"The fact remains that industrial country pledges fall well short of the 25-40% range [from 1990 levels by 2020] that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said gives a 50% chance to keep the global temperature rise below 2C," he said. "It's essential that current pledges grow over the next few years, otherwise the 2C world will be in danger, and the door to a 1.5C world will be slammed shut”.[v]

It is in response to the issues, values and assumptions which inform such statements that we have begun the No Targets project (www.notargets.org.uk). Whilst we share the concern that the observed change in the climate is largely anthropogenic in nature, unprecedented and requires a radical response, imagining the existence of a single global dangerous limit is problematic for a number of reasons. We do not enumerate all those reasons here, but in brief we argue that the notion of a single global dangerous limit is a myth which gives primacy to instrumentalist responses whilst denying the need for a change in the value systems which characterise modernity.

We are collecting stories from individuals and organisations engaged in behaviour change programmes to find out what role the dangerous limit idea plays in their work. Does the idea of the need to avoid two degrees of warming help in these projects or is it an irrelevance? If it is not helping at either the micro or macro level, then there is a strong argument that the dangerous limits discourse should be abandoned. We argue that challenging the legitimacy of the two degree dangerous limit concept will give space for a democratic discussion about what sort of world we want to live in.

If you have any experiences or stories you can contribute to this project please contact us either through the www.notargets.org.uk website or alternatively at c.j.shaw@sussex.ac.uk

---