Description

The weight of climate evidence and now the Paris Climate Accord have placed the target of 2 degrees, or less, of global average temperature rise squarely on the global agenda. With some important exceptions, however, the bulk of the global community from household to city to national and regional scale are both unprepared to implement such efforts, and in fact are largely unaware of the challenges and opportunities to make operational these needed climate goals. In this talk I provide a roadmap to the analytic, technical, policy and behavioral innovations that have made this target,while still a tremendous challenge, an achievable goal. Beginning with energy systems-scale models of North America, China, Central America, East Africa and Southeast Asia, The lessons from these cases is that an unprecedented level of technical and policy coordination are needed to 'bend the curve' of emissions, but that unrealized benefits exist at many scales. While the seeds of the transition from energy 'hunter-gatherers' to 'energy farmers' exists in many venues, this talk will also highlight a number of critical and under-studied and very much under-implemented transition tools.

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