The most comprehensive Australian carbon budget assessment completed to date shows the nation flip-flops from source to sink of carbon emissions, depending on the prevailing conditions.
Record emissions are fast shrinking the remaining amount of carbon dioxide we can emit if we are to limit global warming. At current rates, we’ll use up the budget for a 1.5°C outcome in seven years.
A growing source of global emissions is the ships that carry most of the goods we consume. A 21st-century generation of cargo ships propelled by the wind can reverse this unsustainable trend.
Shipping emitted the same amount of carbon as Germany in 2018.
petrugusa/Shutterstock
At current levels of emissions, there is a 50% chance the planet will reach the 1.5°C global average temperature rise in just nine years.
According to recent estimates, only 500 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide can be emitted from 2020 onwards if we are to stay below the 1.5 C threshold. Global emissions have already hit 80 billion tonnes since then.
(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
H. Damon Matthews, Concordia University and Glen Peters, Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo
The clock tracks global emissions and temperature data, and uses the most recent five-year emissions trend to estimate how much time is left until global warming reaches the 1.5 C threshold.
Most concerning is the long-term upward trends of CO₂ emissions form burning fossil fuels, which are far from trending towards net-zero by 2050.
Global fossil fuel emissions dropped by about seven per cent in 2020 compared with 2019. But a rebound is likely to occur when lockdowns ease up unless COVID-19 recovery packages focus on ‘green recovery.’
(AP Photo/Michael Probst)
Several countries have made pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to zero by mid-century. But new research finds the remaining carbon budget will be depleted before we get there.
The pandemic, along with other recent trends such as the shift towards clean energy, have placed us at a crossroad: the choices we make today can change the course of global emissions.
Protesters at the global climate change strike in Vancouver in September 2019.
(Shutterstock)
In dismissing the youth climate case, the court acknowledged that climate change is serious, but not serious enough to reconsider the reach of the constitution.
If agricultural land was used to grow crops, it would limit methane emissions from livestock, but not store a substantial amount of carbon. Growing trees is what makes the difference.
Coal emissions are falling, but gas and coal use are strongly rising around the world.
EPA/SASCHA STEINBACH
Carbon emissions will hit a record high for the second year in a row, but there is a small silver lining: the rate of emissions growth has slowed dramatically.
The Rhenish Brown Coal Field in Germany. Germany is one of 18 developed countries whose carbon emissions declined between 2005-2015.
SASCHA STEINBACH/AAP
Pep Canadell, CSIRO; Corinne Le Quéré, University of East Anglia; Glen Peters, Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo; Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo, and Robbie Andrew, Center for International Climate and Environment Research - Oslo
Reducing emissions doesn’t have to conflict with a growing economy, as these 18 developed nations show.
An NGO representative stands in front of a replica of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris climate change conference in December 2015.
(Michel Euler/AP Photo)
You could take the bus to work, or eat less meat. But how do you know if your efforts are making a difference? A new approach aims to break global environmental budgets down into digestible chunks.
Hydrogen fuel is just one opportunity for Australia in a clean-energy future.
Sebastian Kahnert/AAP
The latest UN climate report makes it clear that the task of limiting climate change is urgent and huge. We must start to transform our economy today, but it will bring rewards as well as challenges.
Australia has just two decades to put itself on the path to zero greenhouse emissions.
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
The world needs to be carbon-neutral by mid-century to give ourselves a chance of holding global warming to 1.5C. With around 1% of the global carbon budget, Australia needs to rapidly do its share.
Tesla is installing one of the world’s largest solar arrays at its Gigafactory 1 in Nevada.
EPA
Will the renewable energy transition end up creating yet more greenhouse emissions, as we ramp up the manufacture of wind turbines and solar cells? Not if their manufacture is itself powered by renewables.
The growth in global carbon emissions has resumed after a three-year pause.
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
After three years in which global carbon emissions scarcely rose, 2017 has seen them climb by 2%, as the long-anticipated peak in global emissions remains elusive.
Directeur de recherche au Laboratoire des science du climat et de l’environnement, Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)