COP26 president, Alok Sharma warned the climate summit in Glasgow that the window to keep global warming within the 1.5 degree target is closing. Scientists advise that keeping global warming below 1.5C will avoid the worst climate impacts.
Who are the biggest emissions culprits?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that emissions from fossil fuels are the dominant cause of global warming. Currently, 68% of global CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels and industry – we currently depend on fossil fuels to heat our homes, run our vehicles, power industry and manufacturing, and provide us with electricity.
Climate scientists stress that, to save ourselves from a dire future, we must reduce the use of fossil fuel by 75% by 2025, then continue reducing fossil fuel use to net-zero carbon emissions by 2035.
Farming accounts for 11% of the UK’s emissions, and farmers have long been criticised for their failure to tackle their pollution. Many people are now changing their eating habits to vegan, vegetarian or even just reducing the amount of meat they eat. The National Farmers’ Union says farmers can cut pollution by working smarter – applying farm chemicals more precisely using satellite technology, capturing methane from manure to heat people’s homes, changing the diets of sheep and cattle to reduce methane emissions and introducing a wider variety of plant species to pastures.
Another culprit is deforestation, equating to 8% to 10% of annual carbon emissions. One of the drivers of deforestation is to obtain palm oil, now to be found in our foods, cosmetics, cleaning products and fuels. We need to be more aware of where palm oil is used and find alternative products that do not use it if we are to start to reduce deforestation.
Landfill of waste, wastewater and other waste contribute 3.2% of the UK total of carbon and other emissions. The University of Southampton are demonstrating a state-of-the-art technique for measuring the release of landfill gas into the atmosphere to support a national drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Around 2.4% of global CO2 emissions come from aviation; added to other gases and the water vapour trails produced by aircraft, the industry accounts for around 5% of global warming. But in the UK only around half of people fly in any given year, and under 15% are frequent flyers. Globally, 1% of flyers account for 50% of aviation emissions.
One of the most unexpected contributors to carbon emissions is the internet and supporting systems, at 3.7%! Emails, chat messages, internet searches, etc, all cause emissions due to the energy needed to run devices and power the wireless networks accessed. Even more energy intensive are the data centres and the vast servers needed to support the internet and store the content we access over it.
Although each process is small, approximately 4.1 billion people, 53.6% of global population, now use the internet and this is due to double by 2025. Those scraps of energy, and the associated greenhouse gases emitted with each online activity all add up.
There are already initiatives in place in the UK to start meeting our energy needs from renewable sources such as solar, wind, tide, geo-thermal, etc and to begin to phase out fossil fuels. We are well on the way to phasing out coal completely. We have also seen the introduction of the electric car and the ban on production of new diesel and petrol cars from 2030.
But we need to be prepared to change the way we eat, what we buy, how we live and what we do if we hope to achieve the level of reductions we need to see. We also need to lobby for worldwide governments to finance the changes necessary, especially for developing countries.
For more information about Sherwood Forest Friends of the Earth, we’re on Facebook at Sherwood Forest FoE, or email sffofe@btinternet.com.
