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"The decisive factor for the future of mankind on this planet will be how quickly global emissions now descend" (symbol picture)
Photo: DuKai photographer / Getty Images
Between the many reports from the UN climate summit in Glasgow, one almost went under: the Global Carbon Project has revised its figures for global CO2 emissions downwards in recent years. The correction is only moderate and within the specified margin of uncertainty. But its symbolic effect is all the greater. Because according to the new data, the emissions curve has been flat over the past ten years. Emissions no longer do what they seem to have been doing inexorably for decades: keep rising. The peak of global CO2 emissions may already be behind us.
Where does this revision of the data come from? The international Global Carbon Project has been evaluating global carbon dioxide emissions for 16 years. The emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels can still be traced relatively well, because you only need to know the amount of coal, crude oil and natural gas burned in order to calculate the amount of CO2 released.
However, the release of CO2 through land use (especially through deforestation) is much more difficult to record. It currently accounts for almost a tenth of total emissions, and according to the new data it has fallen by around four percent annually over the past decade, while according to the previous year's analysis it should have increased by almost two percent annually. The flat curve results from a further slight increase in the use of fossil fuels with a decreasing expansion of agricultural areas at the expense of forests.
The old figures had already shown the emissions curve to flatten out by 2016 - but then emissions rose to new record highs in 2018 and 2019.
According to new evaluations of satellite data, this increase now seems to be less large.
However, the study's authors warn that the uncertainties in land use emissions are still significant.
The fact that the emissions figures have risen faster than expected this year compared to the Corona low point in 2020, almost to the level of 2019, takes revenge on the fact that worldwide only a very small part of the state economic development in the corona crisis was invested in a green recovery - the lion's share went into the old, fossil-fuel economy.
Governments around the world continue to subsidize the blind flight into climate catastrophe.
Also in Germany, as the Federal Environment Agency has just found again.
The new federal government must end this madness as quickly as possible.
The abolition of the commuter allowance or the tax relief for jet fuel, diesel or company cars is not a tax increase, but a melting away of harmful subsidies.
Because the taxes on gasoline and motor vehicles by no means cover their costs for the general public.
Such benefits are not socially just either, as they are used to a large extent by high-income earners.
Such subsidies have no place in the 21st century.
The decisive factor for the future of mankind on this planet will be how quickly global emissions now descend, because only zero emissions will enable a stable climate. There are certainly encouraging signs. Before the 2015 Paris Climate Summit, it looked like we were heading for catastrophic global warming of up to 4 degrees by the end of the century. Whereby this indicates the global average including the cooler oceans; for land areas this means 6 - 8 degrees. In Germany, warming to date is 2.3 degrees Celsius, twice the global average.
The political changes after Paris brought us in the direction of (admittedly still catastrophic) 3 degrees global warming. The more ambitious voluntary commitments by 2030, which the states made before the current climate summit, would land us at 2.0 to 2.4 degrees if fully implemented, as the
Climate Action Tracker
project
has calculated.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) even announced last week that the new targets announced by some states in Glasgow would put the earth on a path to limit warming to 1.8 degrees. Unfortunately, there is a need to be skeptical. Firstly, these 1.8 degrees are not yet in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, as the IEA itself writes. And secondly, it is partly about vague announcements of long-term goals such as climate neutrality by 2050. For the climate, however, it depends on the total emissions on the way there, i.e. above all on quick measures that cut global emissions in half by 2030. Some governments, like the Australian one, try to divert attention from the shortcomings of their current policies with cheap and unreliable announcements for the distant future.
So, at the moment, mankind is hesitating with stable emissions on the summit, as if it could not bring itself to descend yet.
On the one hand, global emissions are still not falling, the announced ambitions are not yet sufficient for the Paris targets, and it is uncertain whether the ambitions will actually be met.
On the other hand, there is hope because more and more actors are finally recognizing the seriousness of the situation and taking action, for example by forming alliances to phase out coal or by no longer wanting to invest money in fossil energy projects, and because emissions in most industrialized countries are already decoupled from economic growth have and sink.
And the global emissions curve has flattened noticeably, possibly even reaching its maximum.
So there is no reason to despair, but good reasons to keep fighting for the full implementation of the Paris Agreement.