Slashing carbon emissions is no longer be enough to save the world from the consequences of climate change, carbon dioxide (CO2) needs to be sucked from the air and buried, a landmark UN report is expected to say on Monday, as per Agence France-Presse.
Carbon emissions need to fall 6 or 7% within a year to avoid a breach of the Paris climate treaty’s goal to cap global warming well below two degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. Staying below the safer mark of 1.5 degrees Celsius would need a steeper decline in emissions.
Also Read | Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is experiencing a ‘mass bleaching event’
Humanity needed to begin curbing greenhouse gas emissions 20 years back, in which case a 2% reduction, annually, till 2030, would have put the world on the right course. However, 2021 saw emissions climb another 20% to over 40 billion tonnes of CO2.
When the global economy came to a forced halt in 2020, due to the coronavirus, there was only a 5.6% reduction in CO2 emissions, which falls short of the target.
Hence, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is likely to indicate a requirement for carbon dioxide removal (CDR), or “negative emissions”, AFP reported.
Also Read | Every country failed to meet WHO’s air quality standards in 2021: Survey
The problem is that even with aggressive carbon-cutting situations, several billion tonnes of CO2 have to be extracted every year from the earth’s atmosphere by 2050, and an accumulated total of hundreds of billions of tonnes need to be removed by 2100.
Putting things into perspective, the world’s largest direct air capture facility takes a year to remove the carbon emissions put out by humankind in three to four seconds.
Also Read | Humanity is doomed: Young people on climate change
However, there are several other alternatives on the table like Direct Air Carbon Capture and Sequestration (DACCS), which is a new and hot favourite CDR technique, finding backing from innovators like Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Planting trees and resorting to bioenergy are among other available options.