Why Disaster is Coming

The world is emitting more carbon than ever. It’s going to be a problem.

Global temperatures began rising when the Industrial Revolution enhanced our ability to emit greenhouse gases like CO2. And the more we emit, the higher temperatures rise. The correlation is pretty tight. While it doesn’t prove A caused B, it’s strong evidence.

Image: Harvard Kennedy School

Reducing those emissions would stop or at least limit the warming. We (i.e., the world collectively) could do this by not burning so much oil, gas, and coal. But we’re actually burning more fossil fuels and emitting more CO2, and we are years, maybe decades, from significant reductions.

The International Energy Agency just released its 2023 emissions data. Global carbon emissions rose 1.1% to 37.4 billion tons last year, a new record.

Chart: Financial Times

Some media stories correctly point out emissions fell in developed countries. But they rose enough elsewhere to offset that drop and more.

In the big picture, emissions have the same effect no matter who emits them. They all enter the same atmosphere and disperse around the globe. The amount is growing, not falling.

Looking at the chart, you might say emissions are beginning to stabilize. They aren’t growing as fast as in recent decades. IEA says emissions growth would have been 3X higher over the last year without clean energy efforts.

That’s good news, but we still have a problem. The chart below compares what is happening with what needs to happen.

Chart: productiongap.org

Researchers compiled production forecast data from energy agencies in the top 20 energy-producing nations. Add them all together and you get the top line of the chart. It’s expressed in “GtCO2eq/yr” or gigatons of CO2 equivalent per year. A gigaton is 1 billion tons.

The two gold lines are the emissions those same governments claim they are going to allow. The solid one is their stated policies and the dashed one is official pledges. You can see these are nowhere near what the same governments expect to actually happen.

The green line is the emissions level that would limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees C by 2050. The blue line below it is the even safer 1.5 degree goal. The shaded areas around them are the margins of error.

If all this is right, it means emissions aren’t even in the same neighborhood we need.

The best case scenario shown would be for all countries to fulfill their announced pledges and reach the green target zone…  in the late 2030s.

To say that’s not ideal is an understatement.

You see how the weather is already changing. That will continue because the already-emitted gases will stay in the atmosphere for centuries. Meeting these targets would simply keep the climate from getting catastrophically worse. But given we are nowhere near the targets it probably will get worse.

This is why we need to electrify everything and decarbonize our energy sources. Fossil fuel consumption will fall if other sources are cheaper. We also need cleaner fuels for trucks, ships, and planes.

Many smart people are working to make all that happen. I’m optimistic they’ll succeed, but not soon enough to avoid major climate-driven disasters and disruption.

Now is our chance to prepare.