Despite an exceptional drop in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, emissions rebounded and climbed to a record high in 2021.
According to the Physical Science Basis report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .
The budget for the 2 degrees target is about 1.150 gigatons of CO2, which will be exhausted in 22 years if emissions stay at current levels.
It is forecast that total CO2 storage capacity, if well developed and managed, is higher than the amount of CO2 needed to be stored through to the year 2100 to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius of increase.
Luckily governments across the world are tempting corporates with CCS, but as of now only 40 megatons of CO2 globally is captured and stored annually .
European governments are now taking their first steps to reduce their dependency on Russian gas, as a result of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Furthermore, the world needs to prepare for carbon dioxide removal – that can actively take out carbon from the atmosphere and oceans.
So it is becoming increasingly likely that we also need machines to clean up carbon dioxide molecules.
Emissions that exceed the carbon budget can then be removed at a later stage in order to stay within the limits of a 1.5 or 2-degree carbon budget.
We can only rely on CDR technologies to an extent where they do not compensate for delayed emissions reduction efforts across sectors, and to an extent where the deployment of these technologies does not cause detrimental environmental and social effects.
And since some CDR technologies are far away from commercially viable, it would be hard to accurately project their impact until decades later.
Changes in lifestyle must happen at the systemic level across all aspects of the society.
Impartial governance, fair treatment across genders, and income equity will strengthen an economy’s capacity to mitigate climate change.
Households and companies in Europe are now asked to lower their thermostats to save gas, but they are likely to turn their thermostats back on once energy prices reach normal levels again.
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