A Carbon Limit

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report this week making concrete the threat and challenge humankind faces in responding to the reality of climate change.

For the first time the panel described an upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change.  To keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), no more than 1 trillion tons of carbon can be burned.  Since the dawn of the industrial age, we have already burned about half of that total. The report estimated that there are more than 3 trillion tons of carbon in the form of fossil fuels remaining in the world.

This finding underscores a point increasingly stressed by climate change activists — that from now on we must find a way to leave in the ground a large portion of the carbon available to us.

A Carbon Limit