Abstract
Preventing dangerous climate change will involve limiting both the rate and magnitude of climate change over the next century to levels that natural and human systems can tolerate without significant damage. This report shows the implications for overall fossil fuel use, in the form of a ‘carbon budget’, over the next century if the global community is to prevent dangerous climate change.
It is demonstrated that it is only possible to burn a small fraction of the total oil, coal and gas that has already been discovered, if such dangerous changes are to be avoided. Even the reserves of fossil fuels that are considered economic to recover now, with no advances in technology, are far greater than the total allowable ‘carbon budget’.
This conclusion is shown to be robust to a wide range of assumptions about how sensitive the climate is to human interference, and the levels of change that might be considered unacceptable or dangerous.
Comparison of the ‘carbon budget’ with projections of possible future energy sources nevertheless suggests that such a target is both technically and economically feasible.
| W.L. Hare |
| Climate Policy Director |
| Greenpeace International |
The complete report is held in two formats. A complete HTML version is held here. Else for the PDF version (87 pages/463KB & more suitable for printing) you must:
