Climate crisis: today's children face lives with tiny carbon footprints | Environment |... - 0 views
www.theguardian.com/...es-with-tiny-carbon-footprints
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Children born today will have to live their lives with drastically smaller carbon footprints than their grandparents if climate change is to be controlled.
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Fast, deep cuts in global emissions from energy, transport and food are needed to keep temperature rises in check and an analysis has shown this means the new generation will have lifetime carbon budgets almost 90% lower than someone born in 1950.
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“Those in positions of power – from politicians to business leaders – that have benefited from a much higher lifetime carbon budget have a duty to act to ensure a liveable planet for current and future generations,”
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t then calculates how much the average citizen on Earth can emit over their lifetime to keep temperature rises below 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels, the goal of the world’s nations to avoid climate catastrophe.
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The children and young people taking part in the youth strikes (born 1997-2012) will have carbon budgets just one sixth those of their baby boomer grandparents (1946-1964).
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He said it is the first systematic use of emissions data to inform the debate about intergenerational responsibility for climate change and had produced some “uncomfortable numbers”.
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There is a currently a wide gap between the average annual emissions of a US citizen (16.9 tonnes) and an Indian citizen (1.9 tonnes)
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in a second analysis, Carbon Brief posited a future Carbon budget that would be the same for every citizen on the planet. This would mean that the budget for a child born today in the US is even lower, 97% lower than that of that of their grandparents. For someone born today in Europe, their budget would be 94% lower