Project Leader: Mayer Hillman
Sponsor: Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation
Period: May 1998-May 2000
Background
In the last ten years, research has revealed that the planet has a limited carrying capacity for greenhouse gas emissions and that a substantial reduction in these emissions is required if the world’s climate is not to be seriously destabilised. The potential for a catastrophic outcome is reinforced in that the major source of the emissions, carbon dioxide, remains in the atmosphere for about 100 years. At present, however, individuals cannot relate their personal contributions to this global problem because there is no easily available and comprehensible means of doing so.
Study Design
The aim of this project, therefore, is three-fold:
1 To record the extent of current UK average greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-based activities and the scale of reductions required to limit climate destabilisation.
2 To identify the various aids that could be deployed to enable individuals to calculate in a simple way their current annual carbon dioxide emissions resulting from each sector of their lives.
3 To examine the obstacles that can be identified as standing in the way of promoting an equitable per capita or per household ‘ration’ that can be allowed if the level of emissions is not to exceed the planet’s capacity to absorb those from anthropogenic sources.
Importance
There is growing recognition that climate change may be the most significant issue that mankind has ever faced given that the prosperity of all countries in the world is predicated on the assumption that the growth of their economies is the primary route to delivering that prosperity and that much of this growth is heavily dependent on fossil fuel use. For this reason, the need to promote appreciation among the public both of the scale of reduction in emissions that is required and its relevance to their daily fossil fuel-based activities is urgent. Wide-scale adoption of personal carbon budgets, whether on a voluntary basis or as a consequence of governmental diktat, may represent the only moral and political framework that can provide the basis for preventing ecological Armageddon.