Current climate targets are not enough
It’s obvious that current CO2 emissions will destroy a lot of ecosystems. But what most people don’t know is that even with our current targets and current plan, we will still kill some ecosystems and coral reefs as well. We still need to improve and modify our expectations, or economic losses would be substantial.
Coral reefs have already been seriously damaged
Some studies support that the economic value of coral reefs is upto $100bn annually. Also, the cost of forest lost each year is between $2 and $5 trillion.
Coral reefs have already been seriously damaged by the current CO2 rates: oceans on the world have absorbed about 50% of CO2 coming from fossil fuels combustion. Seas disolve a portion of CO2 too, which makes waters slightly more acid. Forests also play an important role absorbing greenhouse gases: they absorb 20%, which is a very cheap way of reducing CO2.
Indeed a major focus of the climate conference in Copenhagen this year will be to consider solutions to protect societies from the impact of climate change.
Current targets such as keeping the temperature no higher than 2 degrees above the pre-industrial level, means carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere can’t surpass 450 parts per million (ppm). The current annual rate of increase is 2ppm per year, and the current level is 387ppm. However these levels are already causing serious damage and anything above 350ppm may damage coral reefs, said Pavan Sukhdev, secondment to the UN Environment Programme.
Recent Comments