The climate change ‘carbon bomb’ is ticking
The new Greenpeace report, the ‘Point of No Return’ by respected consultancy firm Ecofys shows how a global ‘carbon bomb’ – the 14 giant fossil fuel projects being planned would produce 6.3 gigatonnes of CO2 a year in 2020. This is as much as the entire United States emits annually. These have the potential to drive up global emissions 20 per cent by 2020 on their own, making it almost impossible to avoid global temperature rises of 5 – 6oC. The challenge of keeping to 2 oC becomes history with disastrous climate change implications.
The two nations leading the rush to disaster re Australia and China, both with huge plans for coal expansion, but there are many other projects worldwide. This report, more than any other so far, spells out just how far fossil fuel ‘business as usual’ is leading us to disaster.
There’s media attention a-plenty: see below. But will the politicians listen and act with anything like enough energy and commitment to cancel these multi-billion dollar investments and the short—term profits to go with them?
The report is at http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/PageFiles/480942/Point_Of_No_Return.pdf
The Guardian news and links: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/22/china-australia-carbon-bomb
A powerful blog from Business Green: http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/james-blog/2238128/can-anyone-defuse-the-carbon-bomb
