The National Wildlife Federation's blogger says Lieberman-Warner is "a really strong bill" that "falls just short" of their goal "of an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050." When I point out that L-W only achieves about a 60% cut, NWF responds:
80% cuts in carbon emissions will save the planet.
60% cuts in carbon emissions will destroy the planet.
How does that logic work?
Notwithstanding the fact I never said anything of the sort, here for your reading pleasure is the difference between the targets in Lieberman-Warner and the targets recommended by the NWF itself.
If the U.S. and other industrialized nations achieve reductions of 25-40% by 2020 and 80-95% by 2050, we have a good shot of limiting long-term warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
If, instead, the U.S. achieves only the L-W targets, we will be committing ourselves to long-term warming of at least 2-4°C, which will have many unavoidable catastrophic effects, such as widespread to mass extinction (which one would think the NWF would care about).
This is explained (with tables and charts) below the jump.
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