Should we Aim Lower?

I just found this and wanted to share:

I do not consider it useful to talk about actions that if implemented fully, will still result in the climate problem being only half-solved and therefore be ultimately useless. So to advocate restricting CO2-e to at least 450 ppm (with the hopes of better outcomes), or reducing emissions by 25% by 2020 and 80% by 2050, will at best only delay the inevitable crunch. We need CO2-e to be 300-325 ppm, and >100% emissions reductions (with active geo-bio-sequestration) as soon as possible. Nothing less is going to pull [us] out of the sticky mire into which we are now rapidly sinking.

Professor Barry Brook, chair of climate change, School of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Adelaide

If Mr. Brook is right—and given that nearly every year the science finds further threats, I think he is—should we change our stabilization goal from 350 to 300 ppm? And if so, it appears we need to fund olivine sequestration development immediately. But if we could get a ban on deforestation next year (Hah! wouldn't that be great!), as well as global agreement for some of our platform, would that allow for pushing the wide-scale use of this technology further into the future?

I don't know, but I am a fan of the precautionary principle, so my hunch is, "no." Even though it requires mining (though far, far less than is currently done for coal), and it has the potential to be seen as a "fix," therefore fostering the business-as-usual mindset, at some point I have to ask, "How can I not support a locally destructive technology that ultimately results in a benefit for most life on the planet?" We have to lower the CO2 concentration, and the sooner the better. I may have to rearrange the wedges a bit, and move olivine sequestration into the "immediate" camp. But with restraints. Perhaps this technology has to have a cap on it as well, one that corresponds directly to reductions in CO2 emissions. For example, the global treaty would have to ban the funding and use of this technology in any country that wasn't actively enforcing policies that would reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel to meet the country's goal within the global goal. Of course that is way too much climate sense for our current culture to embrace, as it would buck the "unlimited growth" mentality.

The real point of this post is to show that the trend for the developing science on this issue is to prove old predictions were too conservative. Everything is happening faster than expected. See this, for example.