Can climate change get worse? It has...

The Age
May 22, 2007
Liz Minchin, environment reporter

The world is now on track to experience more catastrophic damages from climate change than in the worst-case scenario forecast by international experts, scientists have warned. The research, published in a prestigious US science journal, shows that between 2000 and 2004 the rate of increase in global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels was three times greater than in the 1990s. That is faster than even the worst-case scenario modelled by the world's leading scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, published over recent months, because the updated emissions figures were not available in time to be included.

The climbing emissions mean that average global temperatures are now on track to rise by more than four degrees this century - enough to thaw vast areas of arctic permafrost and leave about 3 billion people suffering from water shortages, including in Australia. And Australia's emissions from fossil fuels are increasing faster than the global average, growing at nearly twice the rate of the United States.

Senior CSIRO scientist Michael Raupach, who led the international research on accelerating global emissions, told The Age that the findings were "dreadful". "Emissions are increasing faster than we thought, which means the impacts of climate change will also happen even sooner than expected," said Dr Raupach, a co-chairman of the Global Carbon Project, based at the CSIRO in Canberra. "What this really highlights is the urgency of cutting emissions. It won't be easy, but we know that we have solutions available to us now to do that and that it can be done at a relatively small cost to the economy."

The jump in emissions since 2000 has been driven by increasing populations, growing global wealth, and greater than expected use of fossil fuels. The paper found that none of the world's major rich or developing regions are "decarbonising" their energy supplies, by reducing demand or switching to less polluting energy, which spells trouble for international efforts to curb global greenhouse emissions. The research is being published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The outlook for Australia is particularly dire. In assessing the same data for Australia, Dr Raupach found Australia's carbon emissions have been growing at nearly twice the global average since 1990. Yet Australia is also considered to be one of the most vulnerable developed countries to climate change. The IPCC recently warned that global warming was now causing "increasing stresses on water supply and agriculture, changed natural ecosystems (and) reduced seasonal snow cover" in Australia.

Dr Raupach also found Australia has achieved less than the US or Europe in improving the carbon intensity of its economy. Australia is the world's second worst carbon polluter per capita, producing 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels alone each year, just behind the US, with 20 tonnes a year. The global average is 4.3 tonnes per person.

"While China's total emissions are far higher than Australia's, that's only because there are 65 Chinese for every Australian; per capita their emissions were 3.7 tonnes a year in 2004," Dr Raupach said. "So when it comes to emissions reductions over the coming decades, Australia clearly has to make a bigger proportional reduction than China in any globally equitable and workable strategy."

Early this month, scientists, economists and government representatives from more than 120 countries signed off a landmark statement saying it was possible and affordable to make deep emission cuts, but that political inaction remained a key barrier to progress.