A post from C40 Executive Director Mark Watts
Early in the new year the Guardian newspaper asked some of the world’s most prominent scientists if it was still possible to prevent catastrophic climate change. The bleak assessment from all but one respondent was that it is not. One called it “on the fanciful edge of implausible”. This not only made for depressing reading, but also provided a marked contrast to the sense of determined optimism that pervaded C40’s mayoral summit a few weeks earlier. Gathered in Mexico City, mayors of the Steering Committee – C40’s elected leadership – voted unanimously to adopt a target of constraining global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average (the toughest goal of the Paris Climate Agreement), and to make it a condition of C40 membership that all cities have a plan to deliver their proportionate contribution towards this goal.
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