"We've got twelve years to act": David Wallace-Wells on the single sentence that could save the planet

Sometimes people get it right on their tweets. The New York Magazine journalist David Wallace-Wells gained global fame for his terrifying article, “The Uninhabitable Earth” (built into a book) depicting the global and societal consequences of degrees of global warming. His Twitter account is focussed on his topic and very much worth following - and we enjoyed the following sequence, on the one sentence that could save the planet (or perhaps more precisely, save us from the planet).

"In model pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030." https://t.co/atANFOgYmI

— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) March 19, 2019

It is true, of course, that there won't be a day in 2030 when earth either takes a path towards total devastation or perfect livability. But the IPCC report states very clearly that avoiding mass climate suffering requires cutting global emissions by roughly 45% by 2030.

— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) March 19, 2019

If you've got a few paragraphs to explain the situation, there is plenty of additional nuance to introduce—about climate change as a spectrum of suffering rather than a binary phenomenon, about ranges of uncertainty, about the possible contributions of negative emissions...

— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) March 19, 2019

But if you've got one sentence, "We've got twelve years to act" is a pretty damn precise recapitulation of the IPCC position, that we must cut emissions by 45% by 2030 to avert dramatic, perhaps catastrophic levels of warming and resulting suffering.

— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) March 19, 2019

And a nice piece from BBC’s Newsbeat describing what a “climate strike about a climate emergency” might mean.