‘Critical turning point' as more nations hit peak carbon emissions: think-tank

The number of countries in which greenhouse gases has peaked continues to rise, representing a "critical turning point" in the task of curbing climate change, according to a report by the World Resources Institute.

While offering a "silver lining", the rate of national peaking won't be fast enough to prevent emissions reaching a zenith before 2030, assuming countries implement their Paris climate pledges, the Washington D.C.-based think-tank said.

Any backsliding by China and the US, the two biggest emitters accounting for more than a third of the total, would also "significantly compromise" the peak projections, it said.

Most of the early peakers were former Eastern Bloc nations, whose heavy industry sectors hammered in the run-up to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Germany, France and the United Kingdom, though, had also seen their greenhouse gas pollution top out by that year.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “‘Critical turning point' as more nations hit peak carbon emissions: think-tank.”

Climate change covered in just one pie chart

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he United Nations' Paris climate talks are less than six months away, and have been widely described as our best chance for an international agreement to curb the effects of global climate change.

In order to reach that goal, we need to know who and where are the biggest emitters.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) has built an open-source database to provide individuals, companies and governments with reliable data about climate change, called the CAIT Climate Data Explorer.

If you’ve ever wished you could visualize all global emissions at once, WRI has just the tool, built from CAIT data.

Check-out the Treehugger chart - “All of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions in one awesome interactive pie chart”

Ethiopia's commitment to curb GHG sets a high bar

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thiopia has made an ambitious commitment to curb its greenhouse gas emissions between now and 2030, according to Kelly Levin, David Rich and Eliza Northrop of the World Resources Institute.

They write on the Thomson Reuters Foundation website that Ethiopia, one of Africa’s most vulnerable nations, and the first least developed country to submit its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the U.N., has set a high bar for similar countries.

 Framework Conventionon Climate Change (UNFCCC), Ethiopia communicated its plans to cut emissions below 2010 levels from 150 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) in 2010 to 145 MtCO2e in 2030.

“This represents a major shift,” the authors write, “since conventional economic growth would more than double Ethiopia’s greenhouse emissions by 2030.”

Read their story - “Ethiopia's climate commitment sets a high bar for national climate action”.

Climate change, heavier storms and more river flooding

Climate change will bring heavier and more intense rain storms meaning, of course, more river flooding.

The World Resources Institute has considered this and reports on new analysis shows that approximately 21 million people worldwide are affected by river floods each year on average.

“That number”, it says, “could increase to 54 million in 2030 due to climate change and socio-economic development.”

These details are noted in a story headed: “World’s 15 Countries with the Most People Exposed to River Floods”.

From irrelevant slowness to lightning speed

Climate change is moving at a human time scale that makes it almost irrelevant to most people.

The reality, which they can’t see in a way that people understand and so judge most things, is moving, in a geological sense, like lightning.

That creates manifest difficulties, not the least being the bringing to the public findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The need for even-handedness, fairness, agreement on complicated wordings, and the constant review and revision of findings takes so long, a delay worsened by procrastination and debate, can make reality and the actual report seem like only remote relations.

A story published by the World Resources Institute headed: “9 Significant Scientific Findings too Recent to Be Included in the New IPCC Report” highlights that difficulty.