BY BRENDAN MONTAGUE AND KYLA MANDEL IN PARIS
David Cameron flew into Paris to warn negotiators at the COP21 talks that politicians will be betraying future generations unless they deal with climateย change.
But the prime ministerโs emotional appeal was swiftly undermined when Dr James Hansen, the grandfather of climate science, said the UNFCCC was discussing measures that are โhalf arsed, half bakedโ and we are therefore โscrewing the nextย generation.โ
Hansen was as far back as 1988 the first to warn world leaders that global climate change was already taking place, and could soon result in catastrophic floods, drought, sea-level rise andย extinctions.
And the former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies was seemingly unimpressed by Cameronโs rhetoric – and policy of supporting fracking in the Unitedย Kingdom.
Asked by climate policy website Carbon Brief about fracking, he said: โWell, thatโs screwing your children and grandchildren. Because if you do that, then there is no way way to avoid the consequences [of] multi-metre sea level rise. But we canโt doย that.
Crystalย Clear
โAnd that is what the science says crystal clear. And yet the politicians pretend not to hear it, or not to understandย it.โ
Hansen, who is attending a Conference of the Parties event for the first time, told the UN: โWhat I am hearing is that the heads of state are planning to clap each other on the back and say this is a very successful conference. If that is what happens, we are screwing the next generation, because we are doing the same asย before.โ
According to The Guardian, he added: โ[A rise of ] 2C is definitely dangerous. We are at the point now where temperatures are hitting the 1C mark and are are on a path above 1C. Even if we reduce emissions 6 percent a year we will still getย 1C.
HOW CLIMATE SCIENCE BECAME A POLITICAL ISSUE
Part 1: James Hansen: How Climate Change Becameย Political
Part 2: James Hansen: I Thought There Would Be a Rationalย Response
Part 3: How Free Market Thatcher First Called for Climateย Action
โInstead we hear the same old thing as Kyoto [in 1997]. We are asking each country to cap emissions, or reduce emissions. In science when you do a well conducted experiment you expect to get the same result. So why are we talking about doing the same again? This is half-arsed andย half-baked.โ
Hansen told DeSmog UK during a moving interview published in October 2014 that when he first became aware that fossil fuel use was contributing to climate change, he assumed policymakers would simply introduce emissions regulations and avert any potentailย threat.
โWe had coal phase-out scenarios. I wasn’t thinking, ‘oh, this is really gonna happen out in the twenty-first century’, because I thought there would be a rationalย response,โ he told DeSmog UK.
โThere has not been: it’s as if we didn’t know. We might as well not know. Our fossil fuel use wouldn’t be much different. By and large, the emissions have just continuedย toย accelerate.โ
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