General Discussion

For a generation, people learning how to address global warming were taught the ideas in the “Wedges” paper.

What they didn’t learn was this: “Wedges” was significantly shaped by the British oil giant BP — one of the single global entities most responsible for causing climate change.

The “Wedges” paper was the initiative’s first big swing. And it succeeded beyond anything its authors could have imagined.

So little has been done to avert fossil fuel emissions for so long, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with the research nonprofit Berkeley Earth, that there is little remaining choice.

“We’ve just wasted so much time,” he said, that meeting goals to limit global warming has become “functionally impossible.”