Political leadership on climate article by Head of School published by Open Access Government
Head of the School of Politics and International Studies, Professor Richard Beardsworth, discusses political leadership on climate and the 1.5°C limit in an article written for Open Access Government.
In 2015, 196 governments signed the Paris Agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21). The overarching aim was to ‘hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C’. In 2018, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicated that crossing the 1.5°C theshold risks severe climate change impacts.
With recent reports predicting that average global temperatures could cross 1.5°C within the next decade, in his article Professor Beardsworth discusses if this limit remains a meaningful normative framework for climate action.
