Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 18

MAKING TROUBLE By Saul Griffith

5,000 Days? CO₂ Targets and How Much Fossil Fuel We Can Burn

A recent Gallup poll shows that 41% of Americans think that reports of climate change are exaggerated, a number that’s grown in the past few years. For someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about climate change and the best way to approach it, this is pretty depressing news.

In order to combat misinformation, it would be really useful to know the urgency of action on climate change: is it needed today, tomorrow, or in 2020?

We often hear the necessary action for climate change expressed as a percentage reduction by a certain year. The current consensus goes something like this: “We need 80% reductions by 2050.” This obscures a whole lot of very ...