Admitting we may fail to hit 1.5°C can help us tackle climate change

NEGOTIATORS from nearly 200 countries are meeting in Bonn, Germany, to discuss how to put the world on track for its climate change ambitions. Chief among those is holding global warming to 1.5°C.

Scientists maintain that the temperature target is still achievable, in the sense that hitting it wouldn’t require breaking the physical laws of science.

But the 1.5°C goal has long since moved beyond these realms, into the arena of politics. Here, most climate researchers fear to tread. They say their job is to lay out the evidence and model scenarios estimating the planet’s thermostat depending on how …