Climate "Report Card"

Have you heard about the UN's recent climate "report card"?

This is how the New York Times began its story, and how the Star Tribune headlined it:

I don't know about you, but back when I got report cards, the grades that meant "needs to improve" did not equal "points to calamity."

Even the wording in the Times story softballs the studies' findings. Just before the jump, in the fourth paragraph, we finally get the fact that the efforts of countries "still aren't enough to avoid calamity."

Here's a visual of what the report really says, shared by climate scientist Simon Donner:

His caption is: "The red is the range of promised actions [in Paris]. The blue and teal are where we need to be." And that's not even claiming that countries met those promised actions.

Assaad Razzouk (who I have written about twice before) posted a summary of the report's key findings:

We must not fool ourselves: we are nowhere near on track to keep warming below 2C, let alone 3C, and we must rapidly accelerate renewable energy deployment, electrifying everything and reversing deforestation to make proper progress by 2030.

Governments in particular must do much more, and corporations and financial institutions such as investors and banks are not doing much and must step up to deliver credible, accountable and transparent climate action

Climate action is good for health, employment, education, citizens and the planet, but it means disruption to Big Oil and petro-states action. This needs to be addressed head-on.

Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, then decline rapidly and deeply. This isn't on track.

It's now cheaper to move to 100% renewables than to dig fossil fuels and continue to burn them, but powerful lobbies and vested interests are trying to maximize very short-term profits and must be confronted.

Moving to 100% renewables, phasing out fossil fuels (yes, they [the report] said that), electrifying everything and reversing deforestation means less poverty, more equity and more inclusion across the board (duh).

We're going to need a shit-load of money to ensure climate refugees don't flood the world because climate change threatens all countries, communities and people.

Investing massively more in climate adaptation is good.

Some impacts will be irreversible as temperatures increase beyond 1.5 °C (a guaranteed outcome) and we need to plan accordingly.

The money for climate adaptation needs to come from rich countries historically responsible for the problem.

We don't need new technologies: we have everything we need to scale-up climate action. We just need to deploy existing technologies faster and on a larger scale, while continuing to decrease their costs.

Governments need to lead and stop being in the pocket of Big Oil.

So that's what it really says. "Needs to improve" doesn't really get at it.

Probably not a great time to be rebuilding (or adding new capacity to) interstates in the U.S.