Just 5 years left to stop climate change

[auroraglacialis]

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns | Environment | The Guardian

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
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"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

If the world is to stay below 2C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, [because above that the greenland iceshield is endangered] then emissions must be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the level is currently around 390ppm. But the world's existing infrastructure is already producing 80% of that "carbon budget", according to the IEA's analysis, published on Wednesday. ...
by 2015 at least 90% of the available "carbon budget" will be swallowed up by our energy and industrial infrastructure. By 2017, there will be no room for manoeuvre at all
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Birol told the Guardian that constraining global warming to moderate levels would be "only a nice utopia" unless drastic action was taken.

5 measly years. "We" have waited way way too long to get on the right track. I feel very sad and depressed if I read this. And it comes from the IEA - not Greenpeace, the green party, the Sierra club or even just the social democratic parties - from the International Energy Agency - a conservative and economics oriented global organization:

The IEA's data is regarded as the gold standard in emissions and energy, and is widely regarded as one of the most conservative in outlook – making the warning all the more stark.