Global Carbon Emissions Rise, Pushing World Toward Dreaded Warming Threshold

(Bloomberg) -- Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels inched higher in 2024 and are estimated to set a record, further jeopardizing the planet’s prospect of meeting a key goal set by the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming, according to an annual report that tracks emissions.

Burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas caused CO2 releases to rise an estimated 0.8% to a record 37.4 billion metric tons in 2024, the Global Carbon Budget study found. Including emissions from changing land use, that total is expected to rise to 41.6 billion this year, pushing atmospheric CO2 levels 52% higher than they were before the industrial revolution.

The new report arrives as policymakers convene at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. It represents yet another sign the planet is nearing a dangerous degree of warming.

There is now a 50% chance that in six years, the world will have warmed more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial average, a number that now seems “so small that it almost makes no sense anymore,” said Glen Peters, senior researcher at the Center for International Climate Research in Norway and an author of the study. 

“My analogy is: Your face is flying to the wall. It hasn’t quite hit the wall yet, but any second now, it’s going to,” he said. The authors of the study anticipate global emissions could soon reach a peak.

Gas is the biggest contributor to the increase among fossil fuels, followed by oil and coal. 

In the past decade, emissions from fossil fuels have climbed on average while emissions from changing land use, like deforestation, have fallen. Both metrics are set to rise this year thanks to drought conditions that exacerbated forest fires in places like Brazil and Canada. Over time, creating new forests and replenishing old ones have offset about half of deforestation emissions, according to the report.

Overall, emissions growth has slowed to around 0.6% per year the past decade from closer to 3% in the 2000s, Peters said. That is evidence that the emergence of renewable energy, and the adoption of electric vehicles are making a difference.

Among countries, India’s emissions are estimated to grow by 4.6%, while emissions from the European Union and the US are projected to decline by 3.8% and 0.6% respectively. China’s CO2 releases, which account for about a third of the world’s total, are expected to remain mostly flat.

“Until we reach net-zero CO2 emissions globally,” said the study’s lead author Pierre Friedlingstein, a professor at the University of Exeter, “world temperatures will continue to rise and cause increasingly severe impacts.”

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