Marking 20 years
of bold journalism,
reader supported.
Analysis

What’s Your Carbon Budget? You Probably Don’t Want to Know

But if politicians ran governments on them, the planet might have a fighting chance.

Crawford Kilian 18 Apr 2019TheTyee.ca

Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.

Conservative politicians are happily fighting carbon taxes and generally ignoring the issue of global warming. At the same time, an uneasy feeling is rippling through the climate-science community these days.

After decades of cautiously understating the consequences of global warming, their models are now showing temperature increases far higher than anyone expected. And other projections show that Canada, including British Columbia, is going to get a lot hotter than, say, San Francisco.

A news story in Science magazine recently reported that computer models of future climate are “running hotter” than they used to.

Older models projected temperature increases of 2 C to 4.5 C with a doubling of preindustrial carbon dioxide levels. Now at least eight models, generated in the U.S., Britain, France, and Canada, predict “equilibrium climate sensitivity” at 5 C or even higher. That is, temperatures won’t level off at 1.5 C or 2 C, as the Paris Accord requires. Instead they will keep climbing until our collective goose is well and truly cooked.

The story quotes John Fyfe of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, as saying, “It’s a bit too early to get wound up… But maybe we have to face a reality in the future that’s more pessimistic than it was in the past.”

The centre’s model, like the others, is being developed for the 2021 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unless these forecasts are drastically revised, the IPCC report will bring very unwelcome news — especially to our federal and provincial governments.

Living within your carbon budget

Meanwhile, a U.K.-based climate website, Carbon Brief, has recently posted an article arguing that children must now emit just one-eighth of the emissions their grandparents enjoyed, simply to keep global temperature “well below” 2 C.

The article includes an interactive tool: put in your date of birth and your country, and you see the carbon budget you’re allowed if you want to keep global warming manageable.

I found that, born in 1941, I have been free to burn 1,282 tonnes of carbon dioxide without serious harm to the climate. But for those born since then, budgets have been shrinking rapidly. Jason Kenney, born in 1968, has a carbon budget of 1,100 tonnes. Justin Trudeau, born in 1971, has a carbon budget of 1,054 tonnes. His oldest son, Xavier, born in 2007, has a budget of just 364 tonnes — three and a half times smaller than that for someone born in 1950.

If you have a toddler born in 2017, your kid will have to live on a carbon budget of 170 tonnes of CO2, 7.4 times smaller than someone born in 1950. To keep the planet below a 1.5 C increase, the global average carbon budget for kids born in 2017 is 43 tonnes.

These budgets vary by country — a Mexican born in 1971 has a budget of 196 tonnes, and a Pakistani just 43 tonnes. An American that is the same age as Trudeau enjoys a budget of 1,227 tonnes. I’ll let you read the article to see how these figures are calculated.

“In the scenarios examined in this article,” says the author, “…global emissions peak around 2020, decline around 50 per cent by 2045 and then fall below zero around 2075 in order to hold global warming to below 2 C.” Getting down to a mere 1.5 C increase would require dropping below zero emissions by 2055 and thereafter “removing carbon from the atmosphere equivalent to roughly a third of today’s emissions.”

Science or fantasy?

The idea of global emissions peaking in 2020 and then falling by half by 2045 take us beyond science fiction into outright fantasy. But to paraphrase Sir Arthur C. Clarke, whenever an old guy says something is impossible, irreverent youngsters will do it anyway, just to annoy him. I hope to find myself disproved and ridiculed as emissions turn down by the time I turn 80 in 2021.

But suppose I’m not disproved. Suppose the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is built, and bitumen comes to Burrard Inlet and on to Asian refineries and furnaces. Suppose fracking goes on apace all over the world, and carbon taxes are memories of the old days. What then might we expect?

Last fall, Carbon Brief published an infographic showing how the world has warmed and how it could continue to warm. Zoom in on Vancouver, and you’ll find that we have already warmed by 1 C over preindustrial levels. By 2100, depending on the model, we will have warmed by 1.6 C to 5 C.

Victoria, meanwhile, will have warmed by only 1.5 C to 4.6 C. And San Francisco in 2100 will be somewhere between 1.2 C and 3.9 C warmer than today.

Climate scientists aren’t kidding when they say the north is warming more sharply than the south: Dawson City in the Yukon has already seen its temperature increase by 1.8 C, and it could rise to 2.8 C and 7.7 C by 2100.

Under such conditions, Canada’s north would be a vast swamp of melting permafrost, catastrophic methane eruptions, drowned or burned forests, and trillions of mosquitos.

Yet Canadian politicians’ attitude toward climate change ranges from lip service to outright denial. Conservative premiers are actively rejecting even a nominal carbon tax while staking their futures on ever more promotion of fossil fuels. Perhaps they privately accept the science, but they also accept the refusal of large groups of voters to be even slightly inconvenienced by reducing their emissions.

By the time the IPCC’s 2021 report is published, Canada will have seen more wildfires, more tornadoes, more droughts and more floods. More climate refugees will move north, welcome or not. More alienated young people will realize that their elders have betrayed them.

But not until they recognize a truly large number of voters who recognize climate change, and who are willing to change their lives, will politicians dare to run on a carbon budget instead of an economic one.  [Tyee]

  • Share:

Facts matter. Get The Tyee's in-depth journalism delivered to your inbox for free

Tyee Commenting Guidelines

Comments that violate guidelines risk being deleted, and violations may result in a temporary or permanent user ban. Maintain the spirit of good conversation to stay in the discussion.
*Please note The Tyee is not a forum for spreading misinformation about COVID-19, denying its existence or minimizing its risk to public health.

Do:

  • Be thoughtful about how your words may affect the communities you are addressing. Language matters
  • Challenge arguments, not commenters
  • Flag trolls and guideline violations
  • Treat all with respect and curiosity, learn from differences of opinion
  • Verify facts, debunk rumours, point out logical fallacies
  • Add context and background
  • Note typos and reporting blind spots
  • Stay on topic

Do not:

  • Use sexist, classist, racist, homophobic or transphobic language
  • Ridicule, misgender, bully, threaten, name call, troll or wish harm on others
  • Personally attack authors or contributors
  • Spread misinformation or perpetuate conspiracies
  • Libel, defame or publish falsehoods
  • Attempt to guess other commenters’ real-life identities
  • Post links without providing context

LATEST STORIES

The Barometer

Do You Think Naheed Nenshi Will Win the Alberta NDP Leadership Race?

Take this week's poll