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Environmentalism, like politics in general, is depressingly polarized these days. On one side, alarmists like the activist Bill McKibben , climatologist James Hansen and blogger Joe Romm warn that if we don’t cut way back on fossil fuels now! civilization may collapse.

SAN FRANCISCO A mantra that has driven global negotiations on carbon dioxide emissions for years has been that policy-makers must prevent warming of more than two degrees Celsius to prevent apocalyptic climate outcomes. And, two degrees has been a point of no return, a limit directly or indirectly agreed to by negotiators at international climate talks. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, whose data since the 1980s has been central to setting that benchmark, said today that two degrees is too much.