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As the world prepares for next month’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, the latest annual global carbon report has been released in London.
It shows carbon emissions hitting record highs in 2008, mainly driven by the burning of coal but thanks to the global financial crisis there was a short reprieve – the equivalent of the world not polluting for six weeks.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Dr Mike Raupach, CSIRO scientist and member of scientific committee of the Global Carbon Project
RAUPACH: Well it’s quite a modest upside because emissions in the first part of this decade from about 2000 to 2007 grew very rapidly. Fossil fuel emissions globally grew by about 3.5 per cent each year, and through that period of about seven years increased by well over 25 per cent. In 2008 emissions grew less, they grew by about 2 per cent, and we believe that that is the signature of the beginning of the financial crisis at about that time. This year, 2009, it’s likely that emissions will in fact decrease slightly, they’ll probably decrease by a couple of per cent as a result of the global financial crisis. Assuming that the global financial crisis recovers as everybody expects it to do, that the world resumes economic growth from roughly now or next year onwards, emissions will follow and resume their former growth trajectory unless there is significant structural change in the way that we generate energy and economic wealth in the course of producing our carbon emissions. In other words we need renewables; we need energy efficiency and processes like that to be implemented very quickly. If that doesn’t happen, and if the relationships between energy, wealth and emissions stay similar to the path they were on in the earlier part of this decade, then emissions will revert to a growth trajectory.
LAM: And where is this growth in carbon emissions coming from?
RAUPACH: Well the difference between the current period and the period nearly 20 years ago when the Kyoto Protocol was first being developed is that emissions now come about 55 per cent from the so-called non-annex B countries, that is the developing countries of the world. China overtook the US in about 2006 as the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide. India has risen rapidly through that league table if you will. But it needs to be remembered that that 55 per cent of emissions from these countries is being generated by about 80 per cent of the world’s population, and the remaining 45 per cent of emissions coming from the developed countries, the rich countries, come from only 20 per cent of the world’s population. So the differences between the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per person between the developing and the developed world still remain very large.
LAM: And Mike even in our region deforestation is happening at an alarming rate but what has the bigger impact? Burning fossil fuels or deforestation?
RAUPACH: Burning fossil fuels by a margin of about four to one, even more than that. At the moment about 15 per cent of total emissions come from deforestation, the remaining 85 per cent come from the burning of fossil fuels. That fraction is decreasing, in other words deforestation is taking up progressively less and less of the total emissions budget that the earth has. And the reason for that is both that apart from effects like the global financial crisis, the fossil fuel component is increasing rapidly, but also that the deforestation component has been roughly steady now for a couple of decades, and there are some signs and just indications that it’s starting to decrease, particularly in Brazil. The two largest countries responsible for the bulk of deforestation emissions are Brazil and Indonesia, who between them account for about 60 per cent of all deforestation.
LAM: And just very briefly Mike what about the role of these so-called carbon sinks, can we expect the oceans to keep absorbing the carbon that we’re putting into the atmosphere?
RAUPACH: Between them land and oceans take up more than half of all emissions from fossil fuels and land use change, the deforestation that is, that enter the atmosphere. And it is critical that we monitor those things to ensure that we see any insipient signs that they will reduce the fraction that they take up. There has been some reduction in that fraction over the last 50 odd years. The amount that the CO2 sinks, both land and ocean take up fluctuates greatly from year to year because they’re highly sensitive to climate variability.