Further Global Economic Growth Impossible

A newly released report by the international think-tank New Economics Foundation (NEF) has revealed that the world has no chance of continuing its economic growth if the planet's climate is to have any chance of surviving. The document shows that the environmental bankruptcy of our planet is imminent, and also that it would take an “unprecedented and probably impossible” amount of carbon-dioxide reduction plans to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius by 2100, the BBC News reports.

“We urgently need to change our economy to live within its environmental budget. There is no global, environmental central bank to bail us out if we become ecologically bankrupt,” NEF's Policy Director, Andrew Simms, explains. Scientists with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have determined in a large number of studies that the temperature rise currently underway needs to be stopped before the two-degree-Celsius threshold is reached. When this happens, they warn, the consequences of global warming, including rising sea levels, ice sheets melting, unpredictable and violent weather patterns, and desertification will spiral out of control.

In their work, the investigators looked at some of the advanced and complete climate models available today, and their predictions. Then they cross-referenced this data with prospective economic-growth plans, and sought to find out whether there was any chance of the two working together. They found out that this scenario was basically impossible to achieve. The team also determined that a three-percent global economic growth meant that the overall carbon intensity would need to decrease by as much as 95 percent. This reduction will have to be calculated in reference to 2002 levels, and will also need to take place by no later than 2050.

This means that, starting from this year, the global economy will need to reduce its carbon intensity by more than 6.5 percent each year. Considering that, between 2000 and 2007, this rate has remained steady, and has experienced no significant fluctuations, the report concludes that it's fairly accurate to say that the objective will not be achieved. Also, the NEF work adds, for each year that is lost, the level of reduction that will need to be made the following year will increase considerably, making it even harder for governments to take direct and efficient action.

“Magic bullets – such as carbon capture and storage, nuclear or even geoengineering – are potentially dangerous distractions from more human-scale solutions. At the moment, magic bullets […] are getting much of the funding and political attention, but are missing the targets. Our research shows that to prevent runaway climate change, this needs to change,” the lead researcher for the NEF climate change and energy program, Victoria Johnson, says. She is also a coauthor of the new paper.