Antinuclear

What if global emissions went down instead of up?

 Sometime in the near future, perhaps as soon as this year, humans are
likely to experience something that has never happened in modern history
before. For the first time, global emissions of planet-warming greenhouse
gases might finally stop rising and head into long-term decline.

No one alive today has known a time like this. Nor has any other recent generation
because, for most of the last 200 years, emissions have risen steadily on
an upward path, interrupted only briefly when something like a financial
crisis or pandemic causes a global economic shock.

The rate of this growth
has been slowing globally, and emissions have now declined in more than 40
nations as countries become more energy efficient, switch from coal to
cleaner gas and swap fossil fuels for renewables. But this has yet to add
up to a global fall in emissions. Once it does though, some analysts think
the politics, psychology and even the financing of climate action could
shift profoundly.

This could shift the behaviour of governments, boardrooms
and investors because it would make fossil fuel investments look more like
a dead end, and green investments a competitive necessity.

Those of us who
live in countries like the UK, where emissions have nearly halved since
1990, know governments can easily use such achievements as an excuse to
take their feet off the emissions-cutting accelerator. Even if emissions do
start waning this year or next, they are unlikely to fall 43 per cent by
2030 from 2019 levels, which is what the Panel says is needed to keep the
Paris Agreement’s 1.5C temperature goal within reach.

In other words, a
global peak in emissions will be a big turning point, but not nearly enough
to contain warming now hitting levels never recorded before. Years of steep
and prolonged falls will be needed after that. This is a big ask and,
ultimately, no one knows for sure what sorts of behavioural shifts a peak
might drive. But in a world of deepening climate gloom, any sign of hope is
surely welcome.

 FT 10th April 2024

https://www.ft.com/content/9b11b105-6fb9-4470-ab8d-3d130fe8f26d

April 12, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized