Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
we are already living beyond our biological means. Every industrialized country, including
China, has exceeded its permissible footprint, and several have exceeded it richly. The UK
average ecological footprint was 6.3 global hectares, and the city of London draws upon a
One issue looms very large in all discussion of future energy use: climate change. What
began in the late 1960s as the predictions of a small group of scientists has grown into
an avalanche of data that has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the rapidly growing
concentrations of GHGs in the Earth's atmosphere are the result of human activity.
5
Measured concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent GHG, have increased from
280 to more than 390 parts per million in the last 150 years. As a consequence, the global
average temperature has increased by 0.76 degrees Celsius. If we follow the “business
as usual” approach, global average temperature is expected to rise during this century by
More than twenty years after the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the dangers of climate change are clearer than ever. Many
of the more than 150 scenarios currently available take into account climate policies, yet
there is still a lack of concerted global action. The position of the largest emitters at the
international climate change conferences that have been held every year since 1995 might
be summed up as: “we recognize the need to jump, we may eventually jump, but we won't
jump first.” This has created a kind of limbo between acceptance of the problem and the
willingness to act. Currently, only the countries of the European Union and Australia have
accepted binding emission reduction targets.
The closest the global community has come to concerted action on climate change were
the Cancún Agreements of 2010, in which all parties to the UNFCCC agreed that they
should reduce their carbon dioxide emissions to avoid a rise in global average temperature
exceeding 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. However, this represented only
agreement on what needs to be done, not a binding commitment to act. To remain below or
at the 2-degree threshold, atmospheric GHG concentrations must not rise above 450 parts
decrease, instead of continuing to increase, no later than 2015 and must fall by 50-85 per
