Bad Idea #37 "1.5 degrees" with Kwesi Quagraine and Erle Ellis

Saving the World From Bad Ideas · Jan 28, 2026 · 1h 4m · transcript

Is the 1.5°C temperature target helping or hindering climate action? In this episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas, Mark Lynas sits down with his co-authors Kwesi Quagraine (climate scientist at NCAR) and Erle Ellis (professor at University of Maryland Baltimore County) to discuss their groundbreaking new paper published in Nature that proposes a complete rethinking of how we measure climate progress.

The team argues that global average temperature targets — the organizing principle of climate policy since Paris 2015 — are intangible, unactionable, and increasingly counterproductive now…