New Delhi: As world leaders negotiate over climate finance at Baku for the 29th United Nations climate change conference (COP29), a new report by the Global Carbon Project warns that the world is very close to reaching the Paris Agreement tipping point of 1.5 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels. The Global Carbon Project is a research team that works with the international science community to establish a common knowledge base to stop the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Published Wednesday, the Global Carbon Budget report projects that by the end of 2024, the world will emit 41.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is one billion tonnes more than that emitted in 2023. It also says that emissions are showing “no sign of peaking”.
Compiled by a group of international scientists, the Global Carbon Budget report presents a complete picture of “the global carbon cycle”, looking at both natural and anthropogenic emissions of the gas fundamentally responsible for global warming.
During the COP29 proceedings Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a startling report which says that 2024 is on its way to being the hottest year on record, making the last 10 years the hottest ever recorded, consecutively.
Also, the Global Carbon Project’s calculations reveal how there is a 50 percent chance that by 2030, the world will have breached the 1.5 degrees Celsius tipping point decided upon while signing the Paris Agreement.
The report does say, however, that this estimate is rather uncertain based on the fact that it is not just carbon dioxide that causes warming, but methane and nitrous oxide too. So, there is a possibility that the tipping point will be reached before 2030.
“Time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goals and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions,” Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who led the study, said in a statement.
The report also says that India is expected to increase its regional emissions by 4.6 percent from last year. The country’s major reliance on coal, natural gas and oil—all three fossil fuels—plays a big role in this leap.
The same situation is mirrored in China, both being developing economies with high infrastructural needs. Alternatively, the European Union (EU) and the US are going to see a minor decline in emissions in 2024 compared to last year.
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Is CO2 removal enough?
Much like a fiscal budget, the 13th edition of the Global Carbon Budget report looks at sources of carbon emissions as well as removal. In the natural cycle, carbon dioxide is released through deforestation and removed through afforestation.
The report this year says that every decade since the 1990s, carbon emissions from natural land use change have decreased. The value in 2024 is 4.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, which is still high in absolute numbers.
Similarly, while the report shows that between 2014 and 2023, as many as 23 countries managed to reduce their emissions from fossil fuels, the absolute value of the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels this year is extremely high (37.4 billion tonnes).
The report also shows that shifting cultivation worldwide is associated with a neutral carbon footprint—any emissions from deforestation for cultivation have been offset by carbon removal from natural forest regrowth in those fields.
Meanwhile, all the world’s technology-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) mechanisms are only able to offset one-millionth of the current carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
The only examples of climate action which the report says are viable include natural regeneration, reforestation and energy transition to renewables.
In countries like the US, natural gas and renewables outperform coal in the power sector, the report says, explaining why fossil fuel emissions declined this year.
“Despite another rise in global emissions this year, the latest data shows evidence of widespread climate action, with the growing penetration of renewables and electric cars displacing fossil fuels and decreasing deforestation emissions in the past decades confirmed for the first time,” Professor Corinne Le Quéré, another author, said in a statement.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)