Thursday 30 May 2013

The Guardian: "It's time to stop investing in the fossil fuel industry"


"It makes no sense to pay for one's pension by investing in companies that make sure we won't have a planet to retire on"

Link to web site

"Here’s the maths: almost every country on earth, including Australia, has signed on to the idea that we shouldn’t raise the planet’s temperature more than two degrees – that was the only tangible outcome of the otherwise pointless Copenhagen conference on climate change in 2009. 

"The one degree we've raised so far has already melted the Arctic, not to mention laid the ground for Australia’s "angry summer". As such, two degrees is too high but it’s the only red line the planet’s governments have ever agreed to.

"We know roughly how much more carbon we can emit before we go past two degrees: about 500 billion tons. And at current rates of emissions, that will take us less than 40 years. But the math gets really impossible when you consider how much carbon the world’s coal, oil and gas industries already have in their reserves.

"That number is about 2,800 gigatons – five times what the most conservative governments and scientists on earth say would be safe to burn."

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