We’re now over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year (more than 8 billion tons of carbon) — and notwithstanding the global economic slowdown, probably poised to rise 2% per year.
The exact future growth rate is quite hard to project because it depends so much on what China does, how quickly peak oil kicks in, and the extent to which other countries around the world keep their substantial Copenhagen/Cancun commitments in the absence of a global agreement.
We have to average below 18 billion tons of CO2 a year for the entire century if we’re going to stabilize at 450 ppm…
And how to fix it, by Umair Haque:
I’d argue that capitalism’s got to do better — and to get there, capitalists have to aspire to matter. For too long, capitalists have taken people, communities, society, nature, and the future for granted — but today, they damn well shouldn’t.
Industrial-age capitalism is, we’re discovering the hard way, predicated on extracting wealth from people, communities, society, nature, and the future. That might just demand abandoning some — or even most — of yesterday’s tired, toxic assumptions about what prosperity is, where it comes from, how it’s ignited, and why it matters.