The 2022 Global Carbon Budget Report is now available, and it reveals that countries continue to emit more than they can sustain.
The analysis concluded that if greenhouse gas emissions keep rising at their current rate, there is now a 50% probability that we will exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius warming goal in just nine years. It was issued on Friday during the COP27 UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
In a statement sent to EcoWatch via email, study leader Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute said, “This year we witness again another spike in global fossil CO2 emissions, when we need a quick drop.
” There are some encouraging signals, but if we are to have any chance of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, leaders gathered at COP27 will need to take significant action. The Global Carbon Budget figures track the development of climate action, and as of now, we are not seeing the necessary action.
The Global Carbon Project is responsible for the Global Carbon Budget report. It is a yearly updated peer-reviewed publication that takes carbon dioxide sinks and sources into consideration.
105 scientists from more than 80 different universities contributed to this year’s study. In order to avert the worst effects of the climate problem, the project predicts the amount of carbon dioxide that human society can still produce before there is a 50% likelihood that we will exceed the Paris Agreement objective of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Global energy policy hasn’t been guiding us in the correct way up to this point. In 2022, emissions are anticipated to exceed 40.6 billion tonnes (GtCO2), which is close to the record of 40.9 GtCO2 set in 2019. Particularly carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels were predicted to hit record highs of 36.6 GtCO2, which is a 1% increase from 2021 levels and marginally higher than levels prior to the 2019 pandemic.
The main contributor to the rise in fossil fuel emissions was oil, while coal emissions rose as well. An increase in flying following the coronavirus lockdown was a major factor in the oil market’s recovery.
The paper also evaluated emissions from changes in land use, such as deforestation, which were anticipated to be 3.9 GtCO2 in 2022.
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Emissions were predicted to decrease by 0.9% in China and by 0.8% in the EU, but to increase by 1.5% in the United States and by 6% in India.
The fact that fossil fuel emissions are increasing more slowly than they were—at more than 0.5 percent per year as opposed to more than 3 percent per year as they were in the aughts—is encouraging. However, if decision-makers want emissions to reach zero by 2050, they must make sure they truly do so and do not just gradually increase.
That would entail a reduction of CO2 of 1.4 Gt per year, or nearly the reduction brought on by the lockdowns in 2020. Leaders must ensure that CO2 emissions do not exceed 380 GB in the future if they want to have a 50% chance of fulfilling the Paris Agreement objective. If emissions stay at their current pace through 2022, 1,230 GtCO2 may be released, which would take 30 years.
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According to a statement sent to EcoWatch by study co-author and Royal Society Research Professor at UEA’s School of Environmental SciencesCorinne Le Qu r, “if governments respond by stepping up clean energy investments and planting, not removing, trees, global emissions might start to fall quickly. We must not let current world events divert our attention from the critical need to reduce emissions in order to stabilize the climate and lower cascading hazards.
