New Scientist has just published this video which examines the amount of additional carbon dioxide which we can “safely” emit and stay within the 2 degree warming limit. It then allocates this to each country on the basis of present population, and examines how several countries would need to react to stay within their allocation.
What is notable is how quickly each country, even China, has to react if we are to stay within the limit, and given that Australia is at the American end of the scale, how quickly we need to react. The alternatives are to ignore the whole thing (which will only make the situation worse once we realise there is no alternative), or to pay other countries to offset our emissions. Clearly it is in our best interests to cut emissions as savagely as possible, and clearly the government’s ETS is not a real option. Its only effect is to throw lots of short term money at the companies who are causing the problem.
There are more details published in this New Scientist article.
Separately the Climate Talks in New York are looking increasingly like more of the same. No one wants to be the first to blink, so we all ride off to hell in a handcart together.
[...] recently published Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan. This starts with the premise which I’ve discussed in the past, that because Australia’s per capita emissions are so high, if each person now living was [...]