2022's Global Carbon Budget Reveals No Sign of Decrease in Carbon Emissions

Right now leaders from nearly every corner of the world are gathered at COP27, the United Nations' annual climate summit, to talk about the future of Earth and our role in guiding its fate. Coinciding with this conference, scientists provided on Thursday substantial evidence underscoring why policymakers must take major action if we're to counteract the human-induced crisis ripping away at our planet.

They found carbon emissions -- the major driver of global warming -- aren't declining. In fact, they're still climbing. 

Formally named the Global Carbon Budget, the team's report calculated that 2022's worldwide carbon emissions remain at record levels with "no sign" of decrease. With this frightening trajectory, there's now a 50% chance that we violate COP 21's famous Paris Agreement goal in just nine years. 

This legally binding agreement, adopted in 2015 by 196 parties, says nations that signed the treaty must do everything in their power to limit global warming to, ideally, below 1.5 degrees Celsius in comparison to preindustrial levels. 

"This year we see yet another rise in global fossil CO2 emissions, when we need a rapid decline," professor Pierre Friedlingstein of Exeter's Global Systems Institute, who led the study published in the journal Earth System Science Data, said in a statement. "There are some positive signs, but leaders meeting at COP27 will have to take meaningful action if we are to have any chance of limiting global warming close to 1.5 degrees Celsius." 

To make matters worse, the report also found that if our emissions patterns don't change, there's a 50% chance we'll violate even the upper end of the Paris Agreement, exceeding not 1.5 but 2 degrees Celsius of global warming in only 30 years.

If our planet warmed beyond 2 degrees, we'd see a huge, terrifying shift in daily life, according to Global Citizen. 

About 37% of the global population would be exposed to at least one severe heat wave every five years, and 36% of land would experience extreme rainfall, the organization said. Developing countries, particularly with coastal towns, are already feeling some of the drastic effects of climate change when it comes to cyclones and hurricanes, but if our planet warmed beyond 2 degrees Celsius, category 4 and 5 tropical storms would become significantly more common across the world. It'd get harder to grow beloved crops like coffee, chocolate and grapes. Mosquitos would become a greater menace, therefore giving many more people malaria and putting them at risk of death. 

And, every inch of a degree after those 2 would make all of these consequences and more worsen exponentially. 

Wildlife habitat loss would double or perhaps even triple with 2 degrees Celsius of warming, according to the organization, but if Earth warmed beyond 4.5 degrees Celsius, the majority of our world would likely no longer be able to host wildlife at all.

Getting into some specifics, the newly released study projects that total global carbon emissions will reach 40.6 billion tons in 2022, a 1% rise from 2021, which reached 36.6 billion tons. This staggering figure treads very close to 2019's whopping 40.9 billion ton emissions mark -- the highest total annual emissions in history. 

From land-use change alone, such as deforestation, emissions are projected to reach 3.9 billion tons this year. Both coal and oil industrial activities are projected to emit more carbon than they did in 2021, with oil acting as the largest contributor to total emissions growth, the report says. However, it also notes that growth in oil emissions is largely explained by international aviation increases this year due to COVID-19 restrictions being lifted. 

Which brings us to one of the most fascinating aspects of the study.

COVID-19 set the stage

To reach zero carbon emissions by 2050, the project scientists say we'd need to provoke a decrease of about 1.4 billion tons of CO2 emissions each year. But they notably compare that drop to the observed fall in 2020 emissions, which resulted from COVID-19 lockdowns. 

"The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting limitations on travel and other economic sectors by countries around the globe drastically decreased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions within just a few weeks," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement last year with regard to a satellite survey that collected effects of the pandemic on the atmosphere. 

"That sudden change," the agency said, "gave scientists an unprecedented view of results that would take regulations years to achieve."

In other words, what would it take for us to willingly shut down industrial plants, minimize flight travel and allow the natural environment to remain unperturbed -- without the looming threat of a deadly disease? When, in fact, that threat wasn't even enough for everyone to agree on the need for lockdowns?

In one bright spot, the project's team found that fossil fuel emissions as a whole have slowed over time, with the average rise peaking during the 2000s at a 3% increase per year, yet average growth in the last decade has remained at about a 0.5% increase per year. Though this slow-down is "far from the emissions decrease we need," the scientists said.

"If governments respond by turbo-charging clean energy investments and planting, not cutting, trees, global emissions could rapidly start to fall," Corinne Le Quéré, a professor at the University of Exter's School of Environmental Sciences and co-author of the study, said in a statement. "We are at a turning point."

The team's findings also presented a breakdown of emissions by country. 

Emissions in China are expected to fall by 0.9% this year, for instance, and those in the EU are expected to fall by 0.8%. The US is poised to see an increase in emissions by 1.5% and India is likely to see an increase by 6%. The rest of the world combined is projected to contribute to a 1.7% increase. 

But when thinking about countries across the world, it might be prudent to consider emissions per capita rather than by the entire nation. That's because India's 6% increase in emissions is largely due to the country generating power for nearly 1.4 billion people, while the United States' increase in emissions stems from the country generating power for only about 332 million people. 

It's also important to note that developing countries don't always have the economic resources to transition to greener energy sources, especially because many of them are already managing the brunt of climate change consequences like floods, droughts and cyclones. 

In 2009, developed countries -- which have historically contributed the most to global warming -- tried to offer a solution by agreeing to pay $100 billion annually to developing countries from 2020 until 2025, sort of trying to fix the problem they created and fostered. 

They still haven't delivered the promised climate aid, and as the crisis ramps up, needs are poised to extend far beyond the initial $500 billion concept. Hopefully, the Global Carbon Budget and COP27 can spur some long-awaited movement.

"The Global Carbon Budget numbers monitor the progress on climate action," Friedlingstein said. "Right now we are not seeing the action required."