Climate countdown: is Australia on track to avoid catastrophe?

To have a good chance of keeping global warming under 2C, there is only a finite amount of carbon pollution the world can emit – that amount is known as our carbon budget.

In 2014, the government’s Climate Change Authority examined what “Australia’s fair share of the global emissions budget” is.

It concluded Australia could emit 10.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gases between 2013 and 2050. If we go beyond that, we have emitted more than our fair share of the global carbon budget.

Using NDEVR Environmental’s latest quarterly projections to the end of September 2016, we have taken a rolling average of emissions from the past four quarters, estimated how much of the carbon budget has been used up to the current second, and created Australia’s carbon clock.

Read The Guardian story - “Climate countdown: is Australia on track to avoid catastrophe?”