Originally posted on Grist
Last year was a bad year for the future of humans and other creatures of the earth. The US failed to act on climate, and the victory of dozens of Tea Party Republicans in November eliminated any prospect for serious action for at least the next three years.
This is tragic. Barring future technological or political miracles, we have now blown by the chance we had to stabilize the carbon blanket surrounding the planet at 450 ppm of C02. Yet it is not “too late” for action. Ambitious politics this decade, culminating in carbon legislation in 2013 or 15 or 17, can still stabilize CO2 at 500 ppm.
Make no mistake: 500 ppm is worth fighting for, each and every day of our lives. Every tenth of a degree matters, and a planet with a carbon blanket that stabilizes at 500 ppm will preserve a dramatically more livable world than will a blanket of 650, or 850 or 1000 ppm. Above all, 500 ppm will give our kids time and a fighting chance to figure out how to roll back concentrations to 450 ppm, and their kids back to 350.
So what’s the plan? How can we build a powerful clean energy majority in Washington, a stronger majority than the one that didn’t get the job done in 2010?
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