Abstract
This article builds on the premise that human consumption of goods, food and transport are the ultimate drivers of climate change. However, the nature of the climate change problem (well described as a tragedy of the commons) makes it difficult for individuals to recognise their personal duty to implement behavioural changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, this article aims to analyse the climate change issue from a human-scale perspective, in which each of us has a clearly defined personal quota of CO2 emissions that limits our activity and there is a finite time during which CO2 emissions must be eliminated to achieve the “well below 2°C” warming limit set by the Paris Agreement of 2015 (COP21). Thus, this work’s primary contribution is to connect an equal per capita fairness approach to a global carbon budget, linking personal levels with planetary levels. Here, we show that a personal quota of 5.0 tons of CO2 yr-1 p-1 is a representative value for both past and future emissions; for this level of a constant per-capita emissions and without considering any mitigation, the global accumulated emissions compatible with the “well below 2°C” and 2°C targets will be exhausted by 2030 and 2050, respectively. These are references years that provide an order of magnitude of the time that is left to reverse the global warming trend. More realistic scenarios that consider a smooth transition toward a zero-emission world show that the global accumulated emissions compatible with the “well below 2°C” and 2°C targets will be exhausted by 2040 and 2080, respectively. Implications of this paper include a return to personal responsibility following equity principles among individuals, and a definition of boundaries to the personal emissions of CO2.
Highlights
Recent studies have shown that global warming in a single year is nearly proportional to the total cumulative amount of CO2 emitted since the pre-industrial period [1,2,3]
Based on the results presented in this article, we obtain that a scenario that considers a constant personal CO2 quota equal to 5.0 tons of CO2 yr-1 p-1 and ZEY = 2030, is consistent with the “well below 2 ̊C” target defined at the COP21 (T = 594 Gt CO2)
We stress that the goal of this paper is not to provide a realistic mitigation pathway but instead to help translate the global climate change problem to a human-scale perspective related to our personal behaviour as citizens/consumers
Summary
Recent studies have shown that global warming in a single year is nearly proportional to the total cumulative amount of CO2 emitted since the pre-industrial period [1,2,3]. The reason for this relationship is both that the radiative forcing of CO2 is larger than those of any other greenhouse gas and that the removal processes of CO2 from the atmosphere require a long
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