A human-scale perspective on global warming: Zero emission year and personal quotas

Abstract

This article builds on the premise that human consumption of goods, food and transport are the ultimate drivers of climate change. However, the nature of the climate change problem (well described as a tragedy of the commons) makes it difficult for individuals to recognise their personal duty to implement behavioural changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, this article aims to analyse the climate change issue from a human-scale perspective, in which each of us has a clearly defined personal quota of CO2 emissions that limits our activity and there is a finite time during which CO2 emissions must be eliminated to achieve the “well below 2°C” warming limit set by the Paris Agreement of 2015 (COP21). Thus, this work’s primary contribution is to connect an equal per capita fairness approach to a global carbon budget, linking personal levels with planetary levels. Here, we show that a personal quota of 5.0 tons of CO2 yr-1 p-1 is a representative value for both past and future emissions; for this level of a constant per-capita emissions and without considering any mitigation, the global accumulated emissions compatible with the “well below 2°C” and 2°C targets will be exhausted by 2030 and 2050, respectively. These are references years that provide an order of magnitude of the time that is left to reverse the global warming trend. More realistic scenarios that consider a smooth transition toward a zero-emission world show that the global accumulated emissions compatible with the “well below 2°C” and 2°C targets will be exhausted by 2040 and 2080, respectively. Implications of this paper include a return to personal responsibility following equity principles among individuals, and a definition of boundaries to the personal emissions of CO2.

How much greenhouse gas can each global inhabitant emit while attaining the Paris Agreement temperature limit goal? The equity dilemma in sharing the global climate budget to 2100

“…However, the method proposed in this paper to calculate the impacts of national circumstances on per-capita emissions rights might require more sophisticated analysis 11 (e.g. the use of monthly mean temperatures instead of the annual one).…”

“…This assumes that 'equal rights' means that each individual has to be allowed to emit an equal amount of GHG. Individual quotas based on the principle of equity have been estimated by de la Fuente et al [11]. Also, some studies have calculated national shares of the mitigation pathways where national emissions are constrained to converge from their current level to an equal per-capita share of global annual emissions at some future year [8,[12][13][14][15].…”

On the evaluation of adaptation practices: a transdisciplinary exploration of drought measures in Chile

“…Finally, we also noted that focusing on a concrete boundary object enabled participants to demystify climate change as an external distant phenomenon, instead relating it to concrete impacts associated with droughts that are expected to be more frequent and severe under a changing climate. This grasping of the climate change problem at a human-scale has also the potential of a wider impact, related to behavioural changes required to address climate change (de La Fuente et al 2017).…”

Uniform Polyester-Based Nanoparticles Assembled via Living Crystallization-Driven Self-Assembly as Friction-Reducing Agents in Engine Oil

“…Global warming, as a result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, is generally agreed to be one of the greatest threats to society in the near future. , Over recent decades, there has been a significant push to reduce carbon emissions from transportation in order to minimize the increase in global temperatures. , One particular focus of this drive has been to reduce frictional losses through improving the oil-based formulations used as lubricant systems in engines. The use of nanoparticles as additives in engine oil has attracted increasing interest owing to their thermal stability, their suitable size scale to interact with the narrow gaps between asperity contacts, and tuneable surface chemistries. − In this regard, inorganic nanoparticles such as MoS 2 , TiO 2 , or CuO have been described in the literature. − However, a major drawback is the density difference between inorganic particles and oils, when the particle diameters are large (>∼10 nm), which often leads to sediment formation .…”