9th June 2015

Climates attended the Walker Institute annual lecture this week to hear Sir David King’s optimism that global warming can be maintained within 2 degrees Celsius.

‘The G7 commitment to phase out fossil fuels by 2100 is a critical turning point.’ said Sir David King, UK Special Representative for Climate Change, pointing to innovation and technological development as creating the means for growth with improved wellbeing.  ‘Climate change is the biggest threat facing mankind,’ he warned. ‘We can’t take 20th century models as workable for the 21st century.,’

Living in developed nations we recognise our responsibility for the emissions over the past century that have brought the world to the brink.  We know things have to change and many of us have already taken some action: we recycle, insulate our homes, think about buying a bike, we may even have installed renewable energy. But then we witness the developing nations moving in the opposite direction, increasing industrialisation and fossil fuel consumption and feel it’s a lost cause, that we’re battling against the tide and we lose momentum. Sir David has an answer to this and it’s based on equity.

Basically, there’s a limit to the total greenhouse gases (GHGs) that can be emitted if we want to restrict global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The developed nations have already used up most of their share of total GHG emissions. So they have to reduce emissions sooner and more radically to get to the target 2 tonnes CO2 per head by 2050. 

That’s what we need to keep global warming below 2 degrees.

The developing nations started later and therefore have a bigger share of GHG emissions left. With much lower average emissions per person, (compare India’s 2 tonnes CO2 average to the US’s 19 tonnes) it’s OK if developing nations continue to increase their GHG emissions over the short term so long as they come back down and we all meet up at 2 tonnes per person in 2050.

A fair share of GHGs and equity in 2050, that’s worth working towards.

Climates is the new social network for people who want to take practical action on climate change in their own lives. Climates, with the emphasis firmly on ‘mates’, can now be confident that the actions we take to reduce our carbon footprints do make a difference, and that together we can create a cleaner and fairer world.  Join Climates on www.climates.network, like Climates on Facebook and follow on Twitter.

Photo by Michael Swan courtesy of Creative Commons license.