It strikes me that there's something self-defeating about the way that some climate change experts have started talking about emissions goals. For a while, 1.5C was seen as a critical benchmark that would serve to minimize some of the most devastating effects of climate change, even though many catastrophic effects would still have been "baked in" to our future. But over the past little while, I've noticed that the discourse seems to have changed; rather than talking about the importance of hitting the hard benchmark of 1.5C, scientists have softened the narrative, arguing that the closer to 1.5C the better. For instance, I just listened to a radio interview in which a scientist reaffirmed the importance of 1.5C, but then spoke of how even if we don't hit 1.5C, 1.6C is better than 1.7C, and so on. So, from the "hard" benchmark of 1.5C, we are starting to "soften" our goals into more of a gradation.

This change in narrative will no doubt serve to embolden climate change denialists.

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