The International Energy Agency has issued an analysis of current emissions of the greenhouse gases causing global warming and the trends and implications that can be seen in the data – and their conclusions are terrifying.

Using language that is unusual for a sober technical adviser the IEA states that “the prospect of limiting the global increase in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius is getting bleaker.”  A broad range of scientists have long agreed that moving beyond that level of global climate change would be disastrous, and that is why it is the target agreed to by the world’s governments.  The IEA noted that this target is getting harder and harder to reach because “80% of projected emissions from the power sector in 2020 are already locked in, as they will come from power plants that are currently in place or under construction today.”

In an article in the Guardian newspaper, Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics (who, the Guardian notes, was the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change  in 2006) issued this dire warning about the new IEA analysis: “These figures indicate that [emissions] are now close to being back on a ‘business as usual’ path. According to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's] projections, such a path … would mean around a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100,” he said.

“Such warming would disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict. That is a risk any sane person would seek to drastically reduce.”

How are we going to change this disastrous course?  We have  all the tools in our hands to do it – moving rapidly away from coal fired power plants, unleashing the full energy efficiency potential all around us, building the renewable energy resources that will convert the wind and sun into energy we can use.