Beth Gould
@abgesquire.bsky.social
Reposted by Beth Gould
![It’s not widely known that most countries and negotiators went into the conference expecting to set a “reasonable” two-degree threshold global temperature rise we should not cross. As my friend Renato Redentor Constantino, a climate organizer in the Philippines, wrote:“The powerful exerted tremendous effort to keep a tiny number, 1.5, out of United Nations documents. 1.5 degrees centigrade represents what science advises as the maximum allowable rise in average global temperature relative to preindustrial temperature levels. It was the representatives of the mostly global-south nations of the Climate Vulnerable Forum who fought to change the threshold from 2 degrees to 1.5.”
I remember them chanting “1.5 to stay alive”, because two degrees was a death sentence for too many places and people. The officially powerless swayed the officially powerful, and 1.5 degrees was written into the treaty and has became a familiar number in climate conversations ever since. Even though we’ve crashed into that 1.5 threshold, far better that it be set there than at 2 degrees, in which case we might well be complacent in the face of even more destructive temperature rise.
It takes far more than storytelling to get where we need to go, but how we tell the stories is crucial. I asked the climate policy expert Leah Stokes of UC Santa Barbara about the impact of Paris and she told me: “When small island nations pushed for 1.5 degrees as the target, they also requested the IPCC [intergovernmental panel on climate change] write a special report on what policy would be required to get there. That report came out in October 2018, and rocked around the world with headlines like ‘we have 12 years’. It changed the entire policy conversation to be focused on cutting pollution in half by 2030. Then, when it came time to design a climate package, Biden made it clear that his plan was to try to meet that target..... [rest at link above]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ya7gfadgypyypiva5pboi6mi/bafkreibgjvjmdl4qajp6n7xkn7ceghvkwiq243qy25lho7ruviebetyzlu@jpeg)
Reposted by Beth Gould
There are well upwards of a BILLION dollars (of OUR money) this year funneled to projects designed specifically to make Trump feel Good about himself: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
Trumps private and public furious response to the onrush of media coverage about his mind, health, age, sleep…
Trumps private and public furious response to the onrush of media coverage about his mind, health, age, sleep…
December 6, 2025 at 2:53 PM
There are well upwards of a BILLION dollars (of OUR money) this year funneled to projects designed specifically to make Trump feel Good about himself: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
Trumps private and public furious response to the onrush of media coverage about his mind, health, age, sleep…
Trumps private and public furious response to the onrush of media coverage about his mind, health, age, sleep…
Reposted by Beth Gould
The headline, the main takeaway from a European viewpoint is this:
The transatlantic relationship as we know it is over. Yes, we kinda knew this. But this is now official US White House policy. Not a sppech, not a statement. The West as it used to be no longer exists.
The transatlantic relationship as we know it is over. Yes, we kinda knew this. But this is now official US White House policy. Not a sppech, not a statement. The West as it used to be no longer exists.
December 5, 2025 at 9:49 AM
The headline, the main takeaway from a European viewpoint is this:
The transatlantic relationship as we know it is over. Yes, we kinda knew this. But this is now official US White House policy. Not a sppech, not a statement. The West as it used to be no longer exists.
The transatlantic relationship as we know it is over. Yes, we kinda knew this. But this is now official US White House policy. Not a sppech, not a statement. The West as it used to be no longer exists.