The United Kingdom’s recently released fifth carbon budget, which sets a goal of cutting national emissions 57 percent from 1990 levels by 2032, is not stringent enough when viewed through the lens of the Paris climate change agreement, according to an editorial by University of Leeds climate mitigation researcher Kate Scott. “The UK government sets its carbon budgets in consultation with the advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which aims only for a 50 [percent] probability of achieving a 2°C limit,” Scott wrote in a Tuesday editorial in the EconoTimes. “Hence, if every country followed the UK’s lead there is already an ‘about as likely as not’ chance of a 2°C future.”
The U.K.’s latest carbon budget is the fifth in a set of “stepping stones” toward the eventual goal of cutting national emissions 80 percent by 2050. That 80 percent reduction, however, is not in line with the goal of the international Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit temperature rise to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible, Scott wrote.
If the world is to keep warming below 2 degrees, only a certain amount of carbon can be released into the atmosphere; this is the global carbon budget. “There’s no internationally-agreed approach to sharing the available carbon budget. However, many feel the UK should pursue more ambitious targets than most, reflecting its outsized historical responsibility for climate change,” according to Scott.
If the remaining global carbon budget is allocated equally based on today’s population, the U.K. will have about nine gigatonnes of greenhouse gases to run through by 2100 to keep temperature rise below 2 degrees. “However, we estimate current UK carbon budgets will mean nearly 15 gigatonnes of emissions from 2011 onwards – that’s 60 [percent] higher than an equal share,” according to the editorial.
