Analysis: World has 9 years to avoid critical climate change threshold

The world can afford to emit greenhouse gases for about nine years at current levels to avert crossing the 1.5-degree warming threshold, according to an analysis released Friday.

The annual Global Carbon Budget, which analyzes the maximum emissions under which the world can stay on track to avert that point, projected that more than 380 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions would cross the red line. This is roughly nine years under current emission levels.

The report found a decline in long-term increase rates for fossil fuel emissions, which were at about 0.6 percent over the last 10 years compared to a high point of 3 percent a year in the first decade of the 21^st century. However, oil emissions in particular have rebounded since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, due largely to increased air travel.

Among major emitters, China is projected to cut emissions about 0.9 percent and the European Union is projected to reduce emissions around 0.8 percent. However, the U.S. is projected to increase its emissions 1.5 percent, while India is on track for a 6 percent increase and all other nations combined are projected to increase theirs 1.7 percent.

The report comes a week into the international COP27 climate summit in Egypt, which President Biden is  scheduled to attend Friday.

“There are some positive signs, but leaders meeting at COP27 will have to take meaningful action if we are to have any chance of limiting global warming close to 1.5°C,” lead author Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, said in a statement. “The Global Carbon Budget numbers monitor the progress on climate action and right now we are not seeing the action required.”

The report identifies a number of steps nations can take to get back on track, most notably accelerating the transition to renewable energy. While the Biden administration has made the transition a major centerpiece of energy policy, the crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led numerous nations to fall back on use of natural gas, which environmentalists warn is not a solution.

Another solution, meanwhile, is reforestation of rainforests, which act as a major carbon sink, or absorber of carbon dioxide that prevents it from entering the atmosphere and driving warming. Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to reverse his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro’s deforestation policies in the Amazon, and has expressed interest in an “OPEC of rainforests” with Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The majority of the world’s rainforests are located within the three nations.