Climate conscious folks, can you help me answer this question: If we want to stay within the planetary boundary defined by 1.5°C global warming, how many emissions in CO2e can each person make per year?
I know there are several ways to make the calculation. I just want to get a ballpark number so we can get some proportions in our lifestyle choices.
The Institute for European Environmental Policy set the qouta at 2,3 tonnes. That's roughly half of an average Danish person, but most countries in the world could actually increase their per capita emissions under that quota, esp. in Africa, but also places like Brazil, Armenia, India and Pakistan are below the quota today https://ieep.eu/publications/carbon-inequality-in-2030-per-capita-consumption-emissions-and-the-1-5c-goal/
That study was made in 2021 and given that we've not seen drastic degrowth in the last four years, we've made a significant overspending of our budget, leaving less for the coming years. That means the number would likely be adjusted down. But how much - who has a more recent calculation?
That study was made in 2021 and given that we've not seen drastic degrowth in the last four years, we've made a significant overspending of our budget, leaving less for the coming years. That means the number would likely be adjusted down. But how much - who has a more recent calculation?
@malte thanks for the link. A quick look at page 3 of the source report (https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621305/bn-carbon-inequality-2030-051121-en.pdf;jsessionid=A159EA1F6294BE9447493003B3F9F179?sequence=1 PDF) cites the “2.3” figure but doesn’t make clear how it’s arrived at. I presume theres’s a flawed and (as you say) out of date carbon budget being divvied up.
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-earth-naturally-absorb says there’s a ~100^9 tonne annual natural carbon cycle. Where to go from there I don’t know
…presumably there needs to be a decent assessment of Earth’s total biomass and what our own mass represents of that as a subset, but I understand there are many large uncertainties there – e.g. vast volumes of bacteria living deep within rock.
I’m aware of the picture below when it comes to mammals https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/113917611142953955
