Fast Track to Ruin

**Update to this post here.

Way back in May I noted that the world economies, far from de-carbonizing, were intensifying their carbon output. So, it's not that surprising to hear Tim Flannery's announcement today that greenhouse gas emissions are outstripping what had been considered the worst case scenario. The Australian scientist and bestselling author (The Weather Makers) told assembled press that, based on IPCC data, the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere had reached about 455 parts per million by mid-2005, decades sooner than expected.

It is worth noting a couple of things here:

• One, 450 ppm has long been held up as the threshold we dare not cross if we hope to avert the worst consequences of warming. Well, if Flannery is right, (and there's no reason to think otherwise), we crossed that line without even breaking stride.
  
  
• Two, the so-called stabilization wedges that Professors Soclow and Pacala devised as a way to solve the climate crisis were based on the IPCC's business-as-usual scenario in which carbon intensity, or the unit of CO2 per dollar of GDP, decreased. In fact, the economies of countries like China and India are "re-carbonizing"; that is, emitting more C02 per dollar of GDP as they turn increasingly to coal to feed their growth. In other words, then, the wedges, while still necessary steps, aren't enough.

The AP reports that, "The new data could add urgency to the next round of U.N. climate change talks on the Indonesian island of Bali in December, which will aim to start negotiations on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012." Well, yeah, one would certainly hope so. Wouldn't one?