Identical CO2 Emissions

Everyone on the planet could get identical greenhouse gas emission rights as part of a drive to halve emissions by 2050, according to a study by Chinese scientists on Monday.

The proposal, presented on the sidelines of a Dec. 1-12 U.N. conference on fighting global warming, would force nations such as the United States which have used most fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution to buy emission rights from poor nations. “Developed countries shall take the lead in reducing emissions,” said Su Wei, head of climate change at China’s National Development and Reform Commission. The Carbon Budget Proposal suggested that emission allowances could be set at 2.33 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year for each person on the planet in the period 1900 to 2050 as part of a goal of halving world emissions by 2050. Most rich nations have already far exceeded their budgets and would have to buy emissions rights to keep on emitting until 2050. U.S. emissions now exceed 20 tonnes per capita. “The accumulative historical emissions in the U.S. is about three times its total carbon budget,” according to the study,by scientists at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Other countries such as Britain or Germany are also overdrawn. Poor nations, such as many African states where emissions are below one tonne per person, were far below their 1900-2050 quotas and would receive cash from the rich. The 190-nation Poznan talks are seeking to work out a new treaty to fight climate change, meant to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 in a step to avert more floods, droughts and rising seas. But the talks are far from agreeing how to work out a fair share of the burden among major emitters.

Source: Reuters

Carbon Footprint – The Definition

The carbon footprint is a measure of the exclusive global amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases emitted by a human activity or accumulated over the full life cycle of a product or service (see Wiedmann and Minx, 2008).

The life cycle concept of the carbon footprint means that it is all-encompassing and includes all possible causes that give rise to carbon emissions. In other words, all direct (on-site, internal) and indirect emissions (off-site, external, embodied, upstream, downstream) need to be taken into account.

Normally, a carbon footprint is expressed as a CO₂ equivalent (usually in kilograms or tonnes), which accounts for the same global warming effects of different greenhouse gases (UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology POST, 2006). Carbon footprints can be calculated using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, or can be restricted to the immediately attributable emissions from energy use of fossil fuels.

An alternative definition of the carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide attributable to the actions of an individual (mainly through their energy use) over a period of one year. This definition underlies the personal carbon calculators. The term owes its origins to the idea that a footprint is what has been left behind as a result of the individual’s activities. Carbon footprints can either consider only direct emissions (typically from energy used in the home and in transport, including travel by cars, airplanes, rail and other public transport), or can also include indirect emissions (including CO2 emissions as a result of goods and services consumed). Bottom-up calculations sum attributable CO2 emissions from individual actions; top-down calculations take total emissions from a country (or other high-level entity) and divide these emissions among the residents (or other participants in that entity).

Read more at Wikipedia.