Worldwatch releases 'State of the World 2009'; IPCC chief challenges Obama to further cut emissions

[bananas]

http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/16/ipcc-chief-challenges-obama-to-further-cut-us-emission-targets/

IPCC chief challenges Obama to further cut U.S. emission targets

Worldwatch just released its State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World, which finds:

The world will have to reduce emissions more drastically than has been widely predicted, essentially ending the emission of carbon dioxide by 2050 to avoid catastrophic disruption to the world’s climate.

At a kick-off event, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said

“President-elect Obama’s goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of climate change.”

Told ya! (see “The U.S. needs a tougher 2020 GHG emissions target“)

Pachauri was the guy handpicked by Bush to replace the “alarmist” Bob Watson. But it’s the facts that make scientists alarmists, not their politics, as I’ve said many times (see “Desperate times, desperate scientists“). At the end of 2007, Pachauri famously said:

If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.

<snip>

From page 131 of the Worldwatch report:

Some observers propose that coal with
carbon capture and storage or nuclear power
may be needed to address climate change
while meeting rising energy demand. But
renewable energy combined with energy efficiency
can do the job, and renewables are the
only technologies available right now that can
achieve the emissions reductions needed in
the near term. Efficiently delivered energy
services that use natural energy flows will
protect the global climate, strengthen the
economy, create millions of new jobs, help
developing countries reduce poverty, increase
personal and societal security in all countries,
reduce international tensions over
resources, and improve the health of people
and ecosystems alike.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5984