Tim Flannery: leaders now understand need to cut emissions 'hard and fast'

Extract from The Guardian

Climate scientist says the world has come a long way since the failed Copenhagen climate conference and now accepts the urgency of tackling rising temperatures

The crowd listen to speeches at the Domain in Sydney, Australia, on 29 November 2015 as part of global climate marches in the lead-up to COP 21 in Paris. Photograph: Ben Doherty for the Guardian

Ben Doherty

@bendohertycorro

Sunday 29 November 2015 19.03 AEDT

The world has “come late” to realising the potential devastation of climate change, Prof Tim Flannery says, but the former Australian of the Year believes there is now a global understanding of the need to cut emissions “hard and fast” to avoid calamitous global warming.

Flannery, also formerly the chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, said world leaders were more committed now to thrashing out a binding global climate agreement than they were at the Copenhagen climate summit five years ago.

The 2009 conference achieved a broad commitment from countries to lower emissions by 2020, but derailed over disagreement between developed and developing countries over the strength of the cuts. The conference was condemned as a failure because countries would not sign a full treaty.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Sydney climate change rally on Sunday, Flannery told The Guardian he was more confident the COP21 talks in Paris could achieve strong binding targets.

“People understand the urgency now, people understand how late it is to act, so we’re better prepared. The politicians understand it better, the bureaucrats understand it better.”

“People understand the need to cut ‘hard and fast’ now, before it’s too late, and we are locked into something truly catastrophic.”

He said while Paris was a vital, and almost final, chance for global leaders to commit to binding targets, it would not be the end of tightening of global emissions.

The Paris targets, if met, Flannery said, would bring the world down to a global temperature rise of between 2.7 and 3.5 degrees from pre-industrial levels.

Tim Flannery. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian

This year the global temperature has reached one degree above those levels. World leaders and the UN have posited that global warming must be limited to two degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100, to avoid catastrophic climate change and sea-level rise.

But Flannery said, “people are now looking for solutions, and seeing that they can be found”, citing a halving in the cost of solar power since the Copenhagen talks five years ago.

“I was heavily involved in Copenhagen as the chairman of the council, and when I used to talk to business they always used to talk about the cost, now when they talk, they talk about the opportunities. That mindset has changed.”

A failure to reach binding agreements in Paris would have calamitous climate impacts, felt most acutely in neighbouring Pacific countries, but also domestically: “we would reach the level where the Great Barrier Reef would begin to die”.