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CONSERVATION GROUPS’ COMMENTS <br />UNCOMPAHGRE FIELD OFFICE RMP AND DEIS <br />10 <br />warming of 2°C or more.”22 “Runaway climate change—in which feedback loops drive ever- <br />worsening climate change, regardless of human activities—are now seen as a risk even at 2°C of <br />warming.”23 Indeed, the impacts of 2°C temperature rise have been “revised upwards, <br />sufficiently so that 2°C now more appropriately represents the threshold between ‘dangerous’ <br />and ‘extremely dangerous’ climate change.”24 <br /> <br />Although the Paris Agreement has underscored that immediate action is needed to avoid <br />‘extremely dangerous’ warming, meeting the voluntary commitments adopted in Paris alone will <br />be insufficient to meet goal of limiting temperature change to between 1.5°C and 2.0°C above <br />pre-industrial levels. As noted by a 2015 UNEP technical report: <br /> <br />The emissions gap between what the full implementation of the unconditional <br />[intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs)] contribute and the least- <br />cost emission level for a pathway to stay below 2°C, is estimated to be 14 GtCO2e <br />(range: 12-17) in 2030 and 7 GtCO2e (range: 5-10) in 2025. When conditional <br />INDCs are included as fully implemented, the emissions gap in 2030 is estimated <br />to be 12 GtCO2e (range: 10-15) and 5 GtCO2e (range: 4-8) in 2025.25 <br /> <br />In other words, far greater emissions reductions are necessary to stay below and 2.0°C, let alone <br />aspire to 1.5°C of warming. If no further progress were made beyond the Paris Agreement, <br />expected warming by 2100 would be 3.5°C.26 In the alternative, if no action is taken and the <br />status quo is maintained—a position reflected in BLM’s draft EIS—estimated warming by 2100 <br />is upwards of 4.5°C.27 <br /> <br /> 22 James Hansen, et al., Assessing “Dangerous Climate Change”: Required Reduction of Carbon <br />Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature, 8 PLoS ONE 8 e81648 <br />(2013) (attached as Exhibit 8). 23 Greg Muttitt, et al., The Sky’s Limit: Why the Paris Climate Goals Require a Managed <br />Decline of Fossil Fuel Production, Oil Change International (Sept. 2016) at 6 (attached as <br />Exhibit 9); see also David Spratt, Climate Reality Check: After Paris, Counting the Cost (March <br />2016) at 8 (attached as Exhibit 10) (“there is an unacceptable risk that before 2°C of warming, <br />significant “long-term” feedbacks will be triggered, in which warming produces conditions that <br />generate more warming, so that carbon sinks such as the oceans and forests become less efficient <br />in storing carbon, and polar warming triggers the release of significant permafrost and clathrate <br />carbon stores. Such an outcome could render ineffective human efforts to control the level of <br />future warming to manageable proportions.”). 24 Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, Beyond ‘Dangerous’ Climate Change: Emission Scenarios <br />for a New World, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (2011) (attached as Exhibit 11). 25 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), The Emissions Gap Report 2015: A UNEP <br />Synthesis Report (Nov. 2015) at xviii (attached as Exhibit 12). 26 Spratt, Climate Reality Check at 2 (attached as Exhibit 10). 27 See Climate Interactive, Climate Scorecard, available at: <br />https://www.climateinteractive.org/programs/scoreboard/; see also, Andrew P. Schurer, et al., <br />Separating Forced from Chaotic Climate Variability over the Past Millennium, Journal of <br />Climate, Vol. 26 (March 2013) (attached as Exhibit 13).