A Beginner’s Guide to the 2019 Carbon Budget — Part 1 (Emissions)
The Global Carbon Budget is an annual publication giving invaluable and up-to-date insights into fossil fuel emissions across the world.
The reports are packed with beautiful visualizations and datasets that help us get a better understanding of the evolution of CO2 emissions worldwide and allow for a better appreciation of the level of effort required to fight climate change.
In order to contribute to the dissemination of this information, I have picked a number of graphs from this publication that I believe are fundamental to better understand why aggressive action is needed to significantly reduce fossil fuel emissions across the planet.
- Global Fossil CO2 Emissions are showing no signs whatsoever of decrease
Despite decades of warning from the scientific community that fossil fuel emissions were contributing to climate change, the overall emission trends have shown no sign of abatement and are on a path of quasi-systematic growth since 1960 with three notable exceptions (slightly visible inflection points on the graph):
- the two oil shocks of 1973 and 1979
- the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s
- the Great Recession of 2008
In other words, in modern history, the only moments were emissions have (relatively) decreased have been in periods of monumental crisis. We have never managed (so far) as a modern human civilization to put a dent on emissions growth in a coordinated, peaceful, voluntary and concerted manner.
2. Dramatic reductions in global CO2 emissions are required to avoid climate catastrophe
A global, scientific consensus exists that temperatures worldwide must be kept to 2°C or below by the end of the century to avoid the most cataclysmic impacts of climate change.
This 2°C figure was enshrined in the 2010 Cancun Agreements (COP 16) and later revisited in the 2015 in the Paris Agreement (COP 21) to include a reference to an an even more ambitious 1.5°C figure to meet demands of Pacific Islands and other low-lying countries who could be wiped off the face of the planet if that threshold is surpassed.
A ‘1.5°C or 2°C compatible pathway’ (see purple, blue, and green lines above) would require dramatic cuts in fossil fuel emissions starting in 2030 at the absolute latest. Any other ‘business as usual’ trajectory leads us to completely unchartered territory from a climate perspective and towards a highly risky and uncertain future of extreme drought, wildfires, rising sea-levels and biodiversity collapse.
3. Meeting scientifically-backed climate objectives will require dramatic cuts in emissions
Let’s take a closer look at the realities of reaching a ‘1.5°C compatible pathway’
If we don’t reduce drastically start reducing our emissions in the next eight years, we will have consumed the entirety of our remaining carbon budget to meet 1.5°C-compatible objectives .
In this scenario, by 2028–2029, emissions will have to literally go off a cliff in order to meet a ‘1.5°C-compatible pathway’. Unless drastic action is taken before 2028, the traditional modus operandi of modern human civilization will need to abruptly seize to be.
In reality, it is now widely assumed that in order to reach a 1.5°C-compatible pathway, ‘negative emissions’ efforts will have to be carried by literally pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere through an array of technologies that either don’t exist yet or have been largely untested at scale.
In the absence of any form of current action on reducing emissions, it is also completely unclear on who would pay for CO2 removal out of the atmosphere and what international system of governance and enforcement would be required to deploy such technologies.
The reason why I insist on showing the ‘1.5°C- compatible pathways’ despite the absolute impossibility of meeting these objectives in the next decade is because it is literarily a matter of territorial and cultural life and death for countries like the Marshall Islands, Fiji, or Tuvalu (to name a few) who could be swallowed by rising sea levels in a +1.5°C scenario.
Let’s turn our attention to a ‘2°C-compatible pathway’ now.
Unlike, the 1.5°C compatible pathway, we don’t face a brutal cliff scenario, if and only if, human civilization starts drastically acting on climate change within the next decade.
This pathway would require humanity to consistently accomplish in the next decade what modern civilization has never been able to even remotely begin to achieve since the beginning of the Industrial Era which is to consistently and dramatically reduce fossil fuel emissions year over year every decade until 2100 and beyond.
Starting in 2020 and depending on the aggressively of mitigation plans, human civilization would need to start decreasing emissions by 6 to 10% annually. This would require a level of mobilization typically only seen in the context of major wars and conflicts.
It’s also tragically interesting to note that had humanity started a mitigation process in 2000, a reduction effort of ‘only’ 4% per year would have been required to meet a 1.5°C-compatible pathway.
A ‘2°C-compatible pathway’ introduces dramatically complex ethical conundrums and expose us to potentially explosive sources of international tension.
Asking for a 6 to 10% reduction in emissions from industrialized countries seems like an attainable and realistic proposition despite the evident sacrifices that would need to happen to meet these objectives.
The proposition becomes far thornier for developing countries who (rightfully) aspire to the levels of material comfort that has historically only been reserved for the West which leads us to the question of future growth and historical responsibility.
4. China is the world’s largest emitted but the United States and Europe have a crushing historical responsibility for historical fossil fuel emissions
Fossil fuel emissions have literally exploded in China since the early 2000s.
Within the span of a decade (2000–2010), China quickly surpassed the EU28 and the United States to become the undisputed leader in emissions globally today. Over a quarter of all emissions today come from China and no substantial change to the climate course of action will happen in the 21st century without cooperation and leadership from China.
The graph above however only tells parts of the story and masks two critical points.
The first one is that the United States and Europe have the highest cumulative share of historical fossil fuel emissions. In other words, the United States have emitted over 25% of all emissions ever while Europe has a 22% share of all historical emissions.
Effectively, the United States and Europe put together are responsible for almost half of all historical fossil CO2 emissions. China in comparison is ‘only’ responsible for 13% of all historical emissions.
This is a fundamental talking point which needs to be consistently used against this increasingly trendy, erroneous and dangerous notion that the United States is ‘only’ responsible for 15% of all emissions today and therefore should be given some slack in terms of drastic commitment to reducing emissions. Same goes with Europe of course who today ‘only’ emits 9% of all global emissions.
The second fundamental point is that China (7 tonnes per person) still emits substantially less annual fossil CO2 emissions per capita than the United States (16.6 tonnes).
The other important point to note here is that China is a giant net exporter of manufactured good. Goods produced in China and consumed in another country are eventually tallied as a Chinese source of emission. Western consumers benefit from countless material goods cheaply produced in China and effectively ‘free ride’ off Chinese emissions. This accounting reality mechanically inflates Chinese emissions rates both in absolute and in relative, per capita terms and conveniently decrease American and European ones.
Not to be ignored as well: India’s current emission per capita ‘only’ stands at 2 tonnes but has been increasing at a rate of 4% since 2013. From a relative standpoint, India is still well under the global average of 4.8 tonnes per capita. However, its population is increasing and slated to surpass China as the world’s most populous county in 2050 with 1.7 billions inhabitants. This mechanically makes India a critical stakeholder in the 21st century climate crisis.
Looking at these figures from a different view below, we start seeing some interesting additional insights more visibly:
American and European emissions per capita have consistently decreased since 2013 by an average rate of -1.5%/yr for the United States and -1.0%/yr for Europe. China’s per capita emissions meanwhile increased substantially from 2000 to 2013 only to start flatlining since then (-0.1%/yr).
Let’s pause here and go back to our ‘pathway to 2°C’ scenarios.
On a planetary scale, emissions per capita will need to decrease by anywhere between 6% to 10% starting in 2020 to avoid the most catastrophic impact of climate change. Despite the immense media attention given to the deployment of renewable energies, smart cities, connected objects, AI, plant-based meats and so forth, the United States and Europe have only reduced emissions by 1% to 1.5% annually since 2013.
China and the rest of the world meanwhile have basically flatlined since 2013.
Nothing short of a monumental, History-defying shift to different modes of production and consumption will allow us to meet the targets that the scientific community has set forth for us.
The objective of this blog post is not to be prescriptive about specific solutions but to ground the debate about the type of future we would like to define for ourselves in hard facts and numbers.
I would like to thank the amazing work of the Global Carbon Project for their insights and data and to Robbie Andrew for making the visualizations used in this post readily available to the public.