According to the Paris Agreement signed in 2015, nearly every country across the globe pledge to maintain the global temperatures below 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C. However, the sustenance of these temperature limits narrows down to tracking the carbon footprint and keeping an eye on the amount of fossil fuels that can be used to burn without exceeding the pre-set 1.5-2°C temperature limits. This notion has a specific term that is called ‘carbon budget’ in the realm of global climate.
“The term that originally coined by Global warming’s terrifying new math is now a popular term that reveals that there are five times more fossil fuel deposits than can ever be burned. However, the reality is quite not the same, and this concept is pretty daunting,” says Stuart Scott, Climate Scientist, and Environmentalist. Especially known for his YouTube Channel, FacingFuture, discussing the impacts of the current economic systems on global warming issues, Stuart Scott serves as the visionary to rescue the world, from the heinous future that global warming holds for us. Stuart was both Founder and Executive Director of ScientistsWarning.org and ScientistsWarning.TV, where he produced numerous programs, including four interviews at COP-24 with Greta Thunberg, whom he introduced to the assembled press. Currently, Scott serves as a Strategic Advisor for the International Society of Ecological Economics.
The ‘burn-able carbon’ budgets set the typical range of fossil fuels that can be ‘safely burned’ between one-fifth and one-third of the remaining proven fossil fuel reserves and assumes that we have plenty of decades to phase out fossil fuels. Stuart Scott explains that this concept can be hazardous and further elevate the issue, making it consequential.
When we think about global warming, the argument is always ideological, theological, and economical. Yet to grab hold of the severe nature of this predicament, there is a need to take a deeper dive and realize how dark the future looks like.
Stuart Scott explains that the concept of carbon is a bit vague and fails to motivate people to get cautious about their carbon footprint. “To begin with, climate change is even dangerous at 1°C, and there are many global warming issues that are not even focused in climate agreements and models. The brutal truth is that we are already in the pits of global warming and committed to cause more, even if we halt the emission of greenhouses gases. The damage has been done,” he says.
Additionally, even if the carbon budget sets the range and makes it evident that there is plenty of fossil fuel left, it is not right to spend the rest like there is no tomorrow. “The concept of the carbon budget is inefficient to make people realize about the sustainable future, it fails to make people considerate about the future of the generations to come,” says Stuart Scott.
Stuart Scott further elucidates that precisely because of this reason, he desired Greta Thunberg to voice her concerns. “You have stolen my childhood with your empty words… entire ecosystems are collapsing – these words by Greta -pierced right through my heart because it the reality. By giving people relief that enough fossil fuel is left to relish our fancy vacations abroad or to flex the luxurious car, we are taking away the childhood of the next generation,” he says. Scott presented Greta Thunberg at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP-24 in Katowice, Poland, in 2018, launching her international career as a youth climate activist with a huge international following and influence.
In spite of all this, nations and governments across the globe are still focused on the hydrocarbons projects, which can prominently push emissions well beyond 2°C, messing up with the climate stabilization and thus making the human race extinct. “With the concept of carbon budget propagating positively, we will surely be snatching the dreams away from the eyes of the next generations, ruining their childhood forever. Yet, there remains hope for the future, even though it is now or never. We need to think about this issue as the need of this hour, not waiting for the decades to take actions, which will make us fall deeper into the pits of global warming we are already trapped in,” says Stuart Scott.
