December 4, 2019

expert reaction to the Global Carbon Budget 2019

The annual update published by the The Global Carbon Project compares carbon emissions for 2019 to previous years.

This Roundup accompanies an SMC Briefing.

Dr Joeri Rogelj, Lecturer in Climate Change at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, said:

“CO2 emissions wiggle from year to year, but it is the long-term trend that is important. The small slowdown this year is really nothing to be overly enthusiastic about.  If no structural change underlies this slowdown than science tells us that emissions will simply gradually continue to increase on average.

“Structural societal and industrial changes need to underlie emissions reductions, otherwise they will always be short lived. Such changes include a shift in near and long-term investments in low-carbon infrastructure, or a plan to make sectors much more energy efficient, including increasing the energy efficiency of buildings and the agricultural sector.

“Emissions from coal have remained relatively stable over the past five years. However, emissions of oil and particularly gas have been increasing at rates faster than those seen over the past two to three decades. As long as global CO2 emissions – from all sources taken together – are not embarking on a clear downward trajectory towards zero by mid-century or shortly thereafter, it is clear that we are not only continuing to make climate change worse, we’re doing it at a pace faster than ever before.”

The Global Carbon Budget 2019 by Glen Peters et al. was published in Earth System Science Data with an accompanying commentary in Nature Climate Change at 00.01 UK time on Wednesday 4 December 2019. 

Declared interests

None to declare.