What are the fossil fuel numbers behind climate change?

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer

Last year Rolling Stone magazine published an eye-opening article called ‘Global warming’s terrifying new math’ which said three numbers should be enough to convince you that we’re in serious trouble:

                           Scientists agree that average global temperatures must be stabilised at less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change

                       It’s estimated that we can emit a maximum of 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide globally by 2050 and still have a reasonable chance of staying beneath 2°C

                           If we burn all the fossil fuel companies’ proven coal, oil and gas reserves[1] it would emit 2795 gigatons of carbon dioxide. This is five times bigger than the limit of 565!!

So it’s clear that we need to keep most of our fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and dramatically reduce our use of fossil fuels.  Carbon dioxide accounted for 84% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 (496 million tonnes) and fossil fuels were responsible for a staggering 96% of them.[2]

 Using fossil fuels also resulted in emissions of other greenhouse gases – over 2% of the UK’s methane emissions and 11% of nitrous oxide emissions. A big concern, however, is how accurate the figure for methane emissions actually is. It doesn’t take into account ‘fugitive’ emissions i.e. those which are unplanned and therefore uncounted like leaks from the gas network, abandoned coal mines and through ‘fracking’ for example.

Changing energy infrastructure takes time, but changing energy use can happen much faster.

  Why do people choose to drive cars like these, which typically produce double or more the climate pollution of a modern diesel saloon? Another easy win is to increase car occupancy and reduce the number of journeys.   At home, turn down the heating a notch, and maybe even invest in solar panels, which remain an attractive financial, as well as environmental, proposition.

And for those concerned about the climate pollution of developing countries, well, I’d say that we’ve led the way into this mess, so we should lead the way out, too. We need a massive turnaround, and fast, and now is a time for action and leadership and not for making excuses.