A Paris-compatible remaining CO2 budget
CO2 emissions accumulate in the atmosphere. The sum of the emissions we still cause is therefore crucial for limiting global warming.
Notes on the carbon clock
The clock indicates how long the remaining budget would last if annual emissions stayed constant. You can choose between the 2°C and 1.5°C scenarios.
The clock illustrates how tight the remaining budgets are. In reality, emissions will not remain constant for a number of years and then suddenly fall to zero. As a rough guide, doubling the displayed number of years gives the time available to reach zero emissions along a linear reduction path.
A web app for deriving global linear emission paths and taking an overshoot into account is available at global-paths.climate-calculator.info.
The budgets used for the clock are based on a probability of compliance of only 66%. The closer we move towards the 2°C limit, the more certain we should be that we will not exceed it.
The Paris Agreement established a ratchet mechanism under which countries are expected to submit increasingly ambitious nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
We urgently need a global discourse on each country’s fair share of the necessary global effort – especially for the major emitters China, the USA, the EU, India, Russia and Japan, which together account for around 70% of CO2 emissions. The pressure on all parties to submit Paris-compatible NDCs must be massively increased.
When an NDC is derived from a global remaining carbon budget, at least the two most important factors – current reality and climate justice – should be taken into account. A weighted allocation key can reflect both a country’s share of current global emissions and its share of the global population.
