Fair Plan 6: Quo Vadis the 80%-Emission-Reduction-By-2050 Plan?

Michael E. Schlesinger^*, Michael Ring, Emily Cross

Climate Research Group, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/acs.2015.52009                

Abstract

In our Fair Plan 5 paper, we compared the CO₂ emissions of the 80%-Emission-Reduction-By-2050 (80/50) Plan with the CO₂ emissions of our Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth’s Climate. We found that the 80/50 Plan reduced CO₂ emissions more rapidly than necessary to achieve the principal objective of the Fair Plan: to keep Global Warming (GW) within the 2℃ (3.6℉) limit adopted by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. Here, we ask the “What If” question: “What would the GW of the 80/50 Plan be post 2100 if its CO₂ emissions post 2100 were kept at their 2100 value?” We find that although the GW of the 80/50 Plan decreases slightly over part of the 21st century, it does not remain constant thereafter. Rather, the GW of the 80/50 Plan begins to increase in 2088, exceeds that of the Fair Plan beginning in 2230, exceeds the 2℃ (3.6℉) limit of the UNFCCC in 2596, and ends the millennium at 2.7℃ (4.8℉). Thus, not only does the 80/50 Plan phase out humanity’s CO₂ emissions faster than necessary to fulfill the UNFCCC constraint, it also fails that constraint if its CO₂ emissions post 2100 are kept at their 2100 value. Accordingly, we believe that the Fair Plan to Safeguard Earth’s Climate is superior to the 80/50 Plan.

Keywords

Climate Change, Global Warming, Greenhouse-Gas Emissions, Mitigation

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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