Sustainable Living: Scientists have plan to fight warming

What if I told you that we already have everything we need to resolve the crisis of global warming, except action? Would you believe me? How about believing two Princeton University economists?

Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow announced in August 2004 that “humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problems for the next half-century.”

Pacala and Socolow have devised “The Princeton Wedge.”
Imagine a graph going up at a sharp angle. This is the graph of projected U.S. carbon emissions during the next half-century.

We are now at 1.8 gigatons of carbon emissions per year, and headed toward 2.6 GtC in the next 45 years, if we keep the same energy-use patterns.

Pacala and Socolow point out that we need to “drive a wedge” into that graph by stabilizing emissions, then reducing them by half (0.9 GtC) in less than 50 years. This will help us avoid some of the worst effects of climate change, like the increasing acidification of the world’s oceans, the rising sea levels, and a 5-degree-or-higher rise in average global temperature.

They pointed out that we need to stabilize our emissions first, and then reduce them over the next 50 years.

Think of that reduction as seven small wedges on the graph representing 1 GtC each.

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