Our climate is in crisis yet the world’s thirst for fossil fuels, a prime cause of the predicament, shows no signs of slackening. Experts from the International Energy Agency last week presented a sobering assessment of the state of play. The world’s reliance on fossil fuels, it warned, remains “stubbornly high”. Carbon emissions are set to rise up until 2040, even if governments manage to meet their environmental targets. Its US counterpart, the Energy Information Agency, paints a similar picture. Global natural gas consumption, it predicts, will jump 40 per cent by 2050.
Projections so far into the future require a degree of scepticism, but the underlying trend is clear. Despite political leaders’ stated intentions to curb greenhouse gas emissions, our continued use of sources such as oil and gas means we risk failing at the great challenge that climate change presents. The evidence in favour of more decisive action is mounting. The IEA’s assessment comes against a backdrop of wildfires in Australi a, and flooding in Venice and northern England. It is difficult to pin single events on higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere but climate scientists are clear that more extreme weather events are linked to emissions caused by humans. If governments are serious about the targets they have set then they need to take action to cut fossil fuel demand.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to keeping global warming to below 2C and ideally 1.5C. Climate scientists warn that even with a target of 2C, global emissions should already be falling each year. Last year they rose by about 2 per cent. Governments have encouraged the supply of green energy — through subsidies for renewables as well as support to encourage the take-up of electric vehicles, but progress is not yet fast enough.