Plumer reads through a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report (pdf), which calculated that “the world is steadily becoming less and less carbon-intensive.” That means “we need to burn fewer fossil fuels to generate a dollar’s worth of economic activity”:
But here’s the bad news: Carbon intensity isn’t falling fast enough. Between 2000 and 2013, carbon intensity fell by 0.9 percent per year. Last year, it fell by 1.2 percent. But the global economy grew fast enough to overcome that, so overall emissions rose. If these trends continue, we’re on track for about 4°C of global warming in the future, which many scientists have deemed extremely dangerous.
By contrast, if the world wants to a) keep growing and b)avoid more than 2°C of global warming (which is the current international goal), then carbon intensity will have to decline much, much faster — by roughly 6.2 percent per year between now and 2050.
James West further unpacks the report:
Overall, PricewaterhouseCoopers paints a bleak picture of a world that’s rapidly running out of time; the required effort to curb global emissions will continue to grow each year. “The timeline is also unforgiving. The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and others have estimated that global emissions will need to peak around 2020 to meet a 2°C [3.6 degrees F] budget,” the report says. “This means that emissions from the developed economies need to be consistently falling, and emissions from major developing countries will also have to start declining from 2020 onwards.” G20 nations, for example, will need to cut their annual energy-related emissions by one-third by 2030, and by just over half by 2050. The pressure will be on the world’s governments to come up with a solution to this enormous challenge at the much-anticipated climate talks in Paris next year.
The Dish 