Is even 450 a fantasy?

This depressing day for enviro news trundles on, and, like many people I know online and in meatspace, I’m finding it harder to remain optimistic. One article and related study neatly summarizes the situation, I think: Even 450 ppm Could Soon Be Out of Reach, PWC Warns:

When the most traditional consultancies in the world note that the world’s economies are emitting far more carbon dioxide than even the most optimistic models suggest is safe, that the trajectories we’re on have a terminus marked “oven,” it’s a real alarm.

Like many alarms, it means, wake up.

Who? Where? PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP (PWC), which recently released a study suggesting that “we have been eating into the finite carbon emissions budget more quickly than we should, leaving us with a carbon debt.”

The study goes on to note that according to its calculations and modeling, the world has been reducing its “carbon intensity,” the carbon emitted per unit of GDP, at just .8 percent per year between 2000 and 2008.

It would be slight progress, except for a couple of things. The first is that world GDP was generally growing through those years, so that even though carbon emitted per unit of GDP went down slightly, total carbon emissions rose, year-on-year, on the whole. The second is that in order to reach the goals the PWC study stipulates, the world would have needed to “decarbonize” at the rate of two percent per annum throughout the 2000-2008 period. That means that according to this study, we’re already seriously off-target.

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This is bad news. The study suggests that we need to change course, sharply: to a 3.5 percent annualized reduction in carbon intensity between 2008 and 2020, merely to get back on a safe path, and so that we can stabilize global CO2 parts-per-million at around 450, which the study claims is the minimum needed in order to “stand a fair chance” of limiting average global changes in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius. If the world is not on course by 2020, there will be real problems. If stasis continues, it “could require rates of decarbonization over the longer term that are incompatible with growth, and put the 450 ppm goal out of reach.”

In order to move forward, the world must, first, budget carbon allocations. First, that involves a roof on total gigatons of CO2: 1,300. Second, that means distributing that CO2 budget among various countries or groups of countries. The study suggests that China should get to emit 28 percent of that CO2, the United States 16 percent, India 9 percent, the EU 10 percent, with the rest divided up among the rest of the countries of the world.

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The first, and most important thing to note, is that according to the PWC models, the world is failing to meet the basic target that would reasonably ensure a safe planet for humans to live on. The second thing is that the PWC models are predicated on a 450 ppm standard. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, has said that 450 ppm would bring with it disaster:

“The Maldive Islands, which are barely a meter above sea level, most of those islands, extensive areas of Bangladesh, a country of 160 million people, and there are other regions, including parts of the U.S., that will be completely devastated. And therefore even the 2-degree limit that we’re talking about, which corresponds to say about 450 parts per million, is pretty bad news.”

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Another important, and substantive, objection to the PWC study is that it basically deals with carbon intensity rather than carbon output, trying to carve out a path in which GDP growth can continue, essentially unabated, so long as the amount of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere per unit of GDP goes down and down and down. Technically, such a calculation makes perfect sense – so long as growth yields if atmospheric CO2 concentrations are on an unacceptable trajectory, rather than the limits for CO2 emissions. But that isn’t what the study suggests – quite the opposite.

But here’s the most important issue: Even a study that bends over backwards to provide for room for growth finds that key countries aren’t even meeting lax obligations. that’s a problem.

Can we finally agree on the following two points:

• Carbon intensity targets are a total sham, and represent one of the purest examples imaginable of humanity trying to make reality bend to our will. It’s this simple: All the environment cares about is the level of various greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Trying to create an artificial standard that differs from that, and could actually allow us to emit more CO2, methane, etc. in absolute amounts, is pathetically delusional.
• Talking about our situation in terms of a remaining carbon (or CO2) budget is the right approach. I’ve been yelling about this point for some time, and I remain convinced that it makes a lot of sense, for two very simple reasons. First, it’s very easy for non-experts to understand. We all have deeply rooted experience in dealing with a fixed remaining amount of some resource, whether it’s money in our pocket or a limit on a credit card or gasoline in our vehicle’s tank or the number of chocolate chip cookies we have to share with a significant other. Second, it very closely mimics reality. While it’s true that measures like “cut emissions 80% by 2050″ are just a more complex expression of the same concept, they obscure the ticking clock nature of a budget. We’re facing an “area under the curve”, as in total emissions, problem; talking exclusively about the exact shape of the curve needlessly complicates matters.

The home page for the PWC study is here, with several downloadables.