Copenhagen Brain Squeeze: Day 3
Oh boy, there’s certainly a lot of work to do.
So says PricewaterhouseCoopers, which put out an analysis looking at how well the world is doing toward reaching emission cuts required by 2050. It concluded that, on average, the world is off track by 10 per cent with regards to staying within its carbon budget for the period between 2000 and 2050. This is based on a global carbon budget of 1,300 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, which aims to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees C (relatively to pre-industrial levels). “At current rates of carbon intensity improvement, the world will already have exceeded its estimated global carbon budget for the first half of this century by 2034, 16 years ahead of schedule,” according to PwC. “Such a ‘business as usual’ scenario could result in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations exceeding 1000ppm CO2e by the end of the century with potentially disastrous implications for the climate system and the global economy.”
Just a reminder: the aim is to stay below 450ppm, and some believe that 350ppm is what’s really required. Translation: Yikes!
Based on this analysis, Canada needs to reduce its emissions roughly 90 per cent from today’s levels to get back on track toward the 2050 goal. On a global basis, PwC estimates that to get back on track the world must reduce its carbon intensity by 3.5 per cent a year by 2020, or 35 per cent “cumulatively” between 2008 and 2020.
We’ve got our work cut out for us… time to roll up our sleeves.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
