[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/EW-03-19-14-Allocating-Carbon-Emissions.mp3|titles=EW 03-19-14 Allocating Carbon Emissions]
The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has adopted a different way of looking at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Since carbon dioxide largely stays in the atmosphere for centuries, the emphasis needs to be on our cumulative emissions over time rather than on tracking yearly totals.
To keep global warming below a target of two degrees Celsius, the panel set a total limit of one trillion tons of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere. The bad news is that we are already more than halfway there.
The idea is that the world has a shared carbon spending account that we can’t exceed. The next question is: who gets to emit the carbon? To date, rich industrialized nations have emitted most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The US has contributed three times as much as China, which has four times the population. Britain has emitted 6% of the world’s carbon with only 1% of its population.
Planet-wide, if we are serious about preventing temperatures from rising more than two degrees, we have to live within a carbon budget. But who gets to spend that budget and who gets to decide how we spend it? By any measure of fairness, quite a few countries have already spent their share, but clearly no country is in a position to cease carbon emissions any time soon.
It is going to take some difficult political agreements and equally difficult practical solutions to solve this problem that affects us all.
**********
.
Web Links
The Trillion-Ton Cap: Allocating The World’s Carbon Emissions
Photo, taken on September 18, 2008, courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr.
.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.