Chapter 1 - Why carbon neutrality in Euro-Asia?

Abstract

Climate change is the most challenging environmental issue of our time. The high quantity of greenhouse gases released by the overexploitation of nonrenewable energy sources and global industrialization has led to environmental degradation and seemingly inexorable temperature rises (Sarkodie et al., 2020). Deforestation and the expansion of petroleum resources use are meeting the growing demand for energy, food, and goods, but these practices are causing emissions of anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs). This results in species extinction, biodiversity losses, droughts, floods, wildfires, ocean acidification, melting of the North and South Poles glaciers (NSPGs), and sea level rise (Mora et al., 2018; Laufkotter et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2022). Even the Netherlands, a country known for its abundant rainfall, is not immune to drought. Power outages and water shortages in India and Pakistan are the results of extremely high heat waves in this region of South Asia. The city of Seoul is affected by exceptional showers and rainstorms. This climate disruption is likely to worsen in the coming years. It was announced that these emissions could even increase by 50% by 2050 (Rabaey and Ragauskas, 2014). Hence the agreement signed in Paris on 12 December 2015 by many countries, the landmark global agreement on emissions reductions. In fact, these countries committed themselves, by 2050, to limit the global temperature increase to less than 2°C, while achieving carbon neutrality. In February 2021, 124 countries confirmed their carbon neutrality ambition (Chen, 2021).