By The world might get to irreversible climate changes in the next five years! Or at least this is the conclusion IEA warns us about. According to the International Energy Agency, the next five years are crucial to the climate changes.
If people continue to build fossil-fuelled power stations as well as inefficient buildings, the global warming will no longer be held to safe levels. This means that if we don’t do something about this, then the chances to combat dangerous climate change will be lost for ever.
The buildings that enter the category of those mentioned above and that will be built in the next few years will produce carbon. And if they produce it now, they will be producing it for the next decades. This factor will lead to irreversible climate changes.
Fatih Birol, chief economist at IEA, has expressed his worries related to this when he stating that:
“I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.”
When scientists refer to the limit of safety, they speak about the world’s necessity of staying below 2C of warming. In this case, there must be no more than 450 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. The current level is at 390 ppm.
The infrastructure that now exists already produces 80% of this “carbon budget” and if we don’t stop from building a high-carbon energy generation, then 90% of the “carbon budget” will be swallowed up by our energy and industrial infrastructure. This means that by 2017, there will no longer be any “carbon buidget” left.
The warning comes when the international negotiations on climate change are in a crucial moment because governments around the world might postpone these negotiations. A new conclusion to the negotiations is needed because the only binding international agreement on emissions (the Kyoto protocol)will expire in 2012.
Birol tried to emphasize the importance of these negotiations when he said that: “I think it’s very important to have a sense of urgency – our analysis shows [what happens] if you do not change investment patterns, which can only happen as a result of an international agreement.”
This whole situation takes even greater dimensions if we take into account the fact that many fossil-fuelled power stations are planned to be built in UK, Europe and Japan. There are already so many emissions-spewing factories, fossil-fuelled power stations as well as inefficient transport and buildings that contribute to the high level of emissions and if we continue to build them, then the future doesn’t look that pink.
The problem with the carbon dioxide is that once it’s released, it stays in the atmosphere and its warming effect will last about a century. There’s no change in the infrastructure built today comparing to the old one. The existing infrastructure together with the one to be built in the five years will contribute to the high-level of emissions just like the ones in the previous generations.
If we go beyond the safety-limit, the climate changes will not only be catastrophic but irreversible as well. Another factor that will make things even worse is the fact that some governments have decided to abandon nuclear energy. This would only lead to an increase in emissions.
IEA publishes the World Energy Outlook every year in order to provide the touchstone for global energy trends. The one that was published this year doesn’t come with great news. IEA says that:
“There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is under way. Although the recovery in the world economy since 2009 has been uneven, and future economic prospects remain uncertain, global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable 5% in 2010, pushing CO2 emissions to a new high. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400bn”.
Source: The Guardian