Ed Miliband highlights the need to “cut the growth of greenhouse gas emissions” as the basis of the global agreement to be reached in Paris in December (“Climate change is more than an environmental issue”, Comment).

However, to appreciate the dire trajectory on which we are already travelling and the rate at which we need to change this, look at the Carbon Budget Accounting Tool on the Global Commons Institute’s website. It makes clear that his target date of “net zero emissions globally some time in the second half of this century” will have to be brought forward considerably if we are to have reasonable odds of arresting the accelerating rates of climate change that we are already experiencing.

Dr Mayer Hillman
Policy Studies Institute
Senior Fellow Emeritus

Letter published in The Observer, 1 March 2015