Temperature Increase

Climate Change Coalition believes:

Australia is one of the biggest per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters in the world. We should help restrict the world’s temperature increase to less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels by leading the way with emission reductions consistent with that global environmental objective.

Temperature has already increased by 0.7°C relative to pre-industrial times. A further 0.6°C is already built in to the global system because of the lag before the climate fully responds to historic emissions. The danger level is 2°C above pre-industrial levels, so we have a margin of:

2 - 0.7 - 0.6 = 0.7°C

which we must not exceed, hence the need for very rapid  reductions.