Environmental Engineering Reference
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global warming below 2°C. It is also depressing that some of the countries with the highest
per capita emissions look as if they will be unable to meet their own voluntary reduction
targets.
Where does all this leave us? The United States has been proposing a way to impose
more rigour and ambition into the bottom-up model. Countries would decide their own
emissiontargets,butthroughreportingmechanisms,theywouldbeabletorevieweachoth-
er's targets and progress. Diringer reports that these ideas have been garnering substantial
interest, although predictably, there is a wide range of views on how to balance the stimu-
lation of ambition without infringing on national sovereignty in setting emission reduction
targets.
Perhaps this does represent the way forward - but only if countries take actions that
are truly designed to aggressively bring down cumulative GHG emissions. This is where
the need for an impartial science framework comes in. It is very unfortunate, but only one
statistic matters in terms of climate mitigation. It is the single volume of total GHG emis-
sions to the atmosphere. Therefore, if we are serious about reducing those cumulative GHG
emissions to levels that will limit global warming, those of us who are contributing most to
the problem on a per capita basis must be prepared for big changes in the way we fuel our
economies. This is such a salient fact that it deserves a paragraph by itself.
A mitigation plan that is expressed as per capita reductions of CO
2
or as a reduction in
carbon intensity of an economic activity is meaningless to the global climate system if total
emissions have not also gone down. A country that is not reducing its total carbon emis-
sions is doing nothing but exacerbating global warming. Total emissions must go down
very significantly because we are working against the huge inventory of anthropogenic
CO
2
already injected into the system. Remember, it is the amount of water in the proverbial
bathtub that matters, so even if we turn down the tap, the water is still going to rise. In fact,
if we wish our grandchildren to live in a world that resembles that which we inherited from
our grandparents, we need to approach (if not actually reach) a carbon-neutral economy
very quickly.
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