During any game or competition the scoreboard is a critical tool that keeps the crowd up-to-date and engaged. So Andrew Jones of the nonprofit Climate Interactive created a scoreboard to keep the world up-to-date on the team effort to reduce global warming.

Jones: “The climate scoreboard is our effort to add up all of the pledges to the global negotiations the U.N. is pulling together in Paris.”

The scoreboard shows the global temperature at the end of the century if all of the countries follow through on their pledges to reduce global warming pollution. And although the pledges so far are not yet enough to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change, such as flooding cities, species extinctions, and extreme weather events, Jones says it is a good start.

Jones: “What we hope that people take away from the scoreboard is that we’ve made significant progress.”

But Jones underscores we have much further to go.

Jones: “It’s not going to be easy to reach our goals of stabilizing the climate. It is going to be worth it.”

The scoreboard can be embedded on websites and shared on social media, so everyone can see the outcome each time there’s a new pledge to limit global warming – helping us all cheer on the home team.

Reporting credit: ChavoBart Digital Media.
Photo source: ClimateInteractive.org

More Resources
ClimateInteractive.org
Climate Scoreboard
Climate Interactive: advancing MIT’s global change modeling legacy
MIT Professor John Sterman