“Report: Maine’s transition to electric cars will be costly” (Dec. 23, Page A1) continues a trend at the Press Herald: journalism seemingly about climate change without climate change context. Without this context, secondary headings like “AN AGGRESSIVE GOAL” and the paragraphs that follow make it seem as if the Mills administration is pushing the envelope on some sort of radical agenda, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

The reality is that Maine’s climate goal of reducing emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 was cutting-edge scientific thought nearly 20 years ago. Since then, we’ve learned a lot about climate change: specifically, that we need much faster reductions. In Paris the world agreed, at the urging of the world’s most vulnerable nations, that warming should be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We’re over 1.2 degrees Celsius of the way there.

Analysis of U.N. reports shows that to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, global emissions must be reduced to near zero by 2040. Even to limit warming to a much more dangerous 2 degrees Celsius, global emissions must drop 4 to 5 percent annually at this late stage in the game.

An 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels might be getting us close to that, but only if one believes the state of Maine deserves to eat into the world’s total carbon budget at the expense of poor and developing nations; a situation thoroughly lacking justice.

In context, electric vehicle adoption plans and other measures are not aggressive but inadequate. Readers, the public and decision makers deserve better.

Jay O’Hara
Portland