8:11am Wednesday 20th May 2009
By Keith Thomson
The planet has been suffering a flu-like pandemic for the last century or so, spread through the indiscriminate production of carbon by a very self-satisfied life form – humans. The symptoms are a higher temperature, strong winds and increased humidity.
Unlike the immediate and global response to swine flu, carbon ‘flu’ has attracted a patchy response with most humans acting as though it has nothing to do with them and believing that it won’t effect them anyway. Indeed, some of them try to suggest that it isn’t happening, and even if it is, it’s nothing to do with us humans.
However, the last 20 years have seen a gradual acceptance of the infection, and from Kyoto onwards, nations have attempted to reduce their CO2 output by various percentages.
The 2012 aim was to reduce the global 1990 level by five per cent, and while one or two countries have managed it – mainly by good luck – there has been an overall increase of 30 per cent.
The ambition for the next few years will be set at Copenhagen in December as the UK aims for a reduction of 60 per cent by 2050 with perhaps 32 per cent by 2020.
Overall there is now an expectation that the emission cut will need to be 80 per cent by the end of the century, and various carbon caps and schemes will endeavour to meet this target.
It’s now suggested that the percentage approach is misleading, as the amount of energy being used world-wide is growing all the time with population and economic growth and rising standards of living, so it would be more helpful to deal with the actual amount of carbon produced. We would then know what we needed to do.
There are about 800 billion tonnes of carbon left in the coal, oil and gas reserves waiting to be used, and we need to burn less than 400 billion tonnes to prevent the planet’s temperature rising more than two degrees Celsius by 2100.
Half the carbon needs to remain in the ground as we go on a carbon-free regime to help reduce the temperature. At the present rate of carbon production, around ten billion tonnes each year, it will only take 40 years of continued fossil fuel use before we will have to stop using it all together. 2050 will be a very interesting year, as by then we will need to have given up the energy sources of coal, oil, gas and wood completely.
That’s a challenging diet.
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