Worldwatch: Cut carbon to near-zero by 2050 to avoid catastrophe
The world's carbon emissions must drop to near zero by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change, says the Worldwatch Institute in it's latest State of the World report. It's a dramatic recommendation -- much more ambitious than most experts and political leaders have called for. President-elect Obama, for instance, has called for an 80 percent drop in U.S. carbon emissions by 2050.
To stave off mean global temperature rises that would overwhelm our ability to adapt to or mitigate. carbon emissions should peak by 2020, drop off to 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and continue to fall beyond mid-century. The globe would need to go "carbon negative" after 2050 -- absorbing more carbon dioxide than is being emitted.
Worldwatch considers 2009 a crucial year:
Scientists have warned that we have only a few years to reverse the rise in greenhouse gas emissions and help avoid abrupt and catastrophic climate change. The world community has agreed to negotiate a new climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009. Early that same year, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th U.S. President. The United States, one of the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases, will have its best chance to provide global leadership by passing national climate legislation and constructively engaging with the international community to forge a new consensus on halting emissions.
Worldwatch says the world's nations, particularly the richer nations, must "go beyond the incremental half-measures that mark climate policy debates in too many capitals...only by understanding the unique scale and vast time horizon of the climate problem [can] the needed political will can be mustered. And because solving the climate problem will have such significant benefits for human welfare, it may turn out that big solutions will be easier to adopt than the policy baby steps that have proven so difficult during the past two decades."
State of the World 2009 covers many solutions to global warming that already exist, says Worldwatch -- from next-gen technologies to adaptation strategies.
"However this turns out, we still have some precious time and a clear shot at safely managing human-induced climate change," report co-author Robert Engelman told Reuters. "What's at stake is not just nature as we've always known it, but quite possibly the survival of our civilization. It's going to be a really interesting year."
COMMENTS (37)