Very few people have been doing climate science much longer than Steve Schneider (so long, in fact, that he’s about to publish a book, "Science as a Contact Sport," about the various battles that marked his decades of work in the field). We spoke together at a conference in Oslo recently, where he too agreed that 350 was the target to aim for. Here’s how he put it:
"We’ll experience a dangerous overshoot as a virtual certainty. So we need an aspirational goal for coming down of the backside of the overshoot and 350 is a very smart target in that unfortunate frame."
By now, most of the most senior and credible voices in the scientific community have weighed in, from Jim Hansen to Rajendra Pachauri. 350 is where we need to be heading–and all of them, when we talk, emphasize just how grateful they are to civil society for spreading the message.