This message is for folks that have given up on 1.5 degrees of warming. This is also a message for folks that are thinking about giving up on 1.5 degrees of warming. (On LinkedIn here and YouTube here)

For the last several years, I've been focused on this 1.5C degree warming target. That means long-term steady state at 1.5C degrees, and 2C degrees as a temporary buffer (e.g. we can kind of go a bit above 1.5C and cool down later). This is all well covered in the IPCC reports, especially the 2018 report on 1.5 degrees of warming. That's where we get this net zero by 2050 target from, plus 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide removal by 2050.

I've been looking at how things are going. I'm grateful for all of you that shared conversations with me about what you're seeing and your comprehensive plans for a stable climate.

On the climate side, you probably know this, but we crossed over one and a half degrees of warming temporarily two years ago. And so we're currently in overshoot for one and a half degrees.

And on the climate action side, how's it going with that? We know that decarbonization hasn't been moving as quickly as needed, and carbon dioxide removal and cooling aren't either. Unfortunately, at a time when innovation and scaling are really needed, venture capital has pulled back, government policies have been revoked or canceled, even for things like net zero carbon energy, and most climate markets remain small. For example, the majority of carbon dioxide removal depends on one single buyer.

Now, the thinking goes that since we're not making the progress that we need to, then how about 2 degrees as a target instead? It seems a lot more reasonable. Things will just get warmer than 2 degrees in the meantime, but we'll just kind of shift the whole plan upwards.

And in that line of thinking, there is a ton more time to scale the technologies, to improve our abilities, to improve our policies, to make these things happen at climate scale. In carbon dioxide removal, for example, instead of 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide removal by 2050, with 2C as a target, you can wait till 2100. That's 50 more years of precious time to make progress.

That all sounds great.

But the risk of the changing climate has never been that it gets a little bit warmer, a little bit warmer, and then we just cool down later. The risk of the changing climate has always been that we hit tipping points and we move not just from a little bit warmer, a little bit warmer, maybe a little bit of an ice age, but instead we shift into a climate unknown, unlike anything the human species has ever seen.

That's the risk. That's what we're toying with with these temperatures.

The higher we go, the higher the likelihood of tipping into an unstable climate rises. And the more research that I've done on the climate side, the more climate scientists I've talked with, it just doesn't seem to meet the models for two degrees of the target meet my threshold for the probability of working. It might work out fine, but I am not willing to bet on it.

The challenge is at the same time as our actions have slowed, tipping points are showing up earlier than expected. The climate has warmed faster than predicted. Report after report, things look consistently worse than the models. So on one hand, our progress has slowed, but on the other, the impacts of the changing climate have come faster and faster.

It's clear now the climate is not going to wait for us to catch up.

Betting on a two-degree warming target is more risky than I'm comfortable with. That's why I'm not ready to give up on one and a half degrees of warming.

I'm not saying that it's likely that we pull off one and a half degrees. I'm saying this is what I want. This is what I'm here for.

If you've given up but you want to keep the planet on course for one and a half degrees of warming anyway, hit reply. Even if it's something that doesn't seem possible to you right now, hit reply.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Tito