In 1997, the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that we could ‘afford’ to burn a limited amount of fossil fuels in the 21st century – burning more than 225 Gigatons of carbon would wreck the climate. We had to work to a “carbon budget”. The IPCC also pointed out that known, recoverable reserves of fossil fuels were much greater than this budget. The ten year old graph tells the story.
Greenpeace published a very detailed ‘Carbon Logic’ analysis of this in 1997. The basic argument was:
- the climate is changing
- because we burn fossil fuels
- burning too much will cook the climate – we have a carbon budget
- we have more reserves than we can affort to burn
- therefore why look for more reserves?
In 1997, this was a complex argument that few people would listen to, because back then few people believed the first three points in the logic. Ten years on, people know better. Unfortunately, ten years on, those figures from the IPCC were probably too optimistic… the science has got much more worrying, the budget is smaller, and we’ve found more reserves.
And ten years on, Exxon alone will spend $20 billion on oil exploration and new refineries this year – what a waste of money, looking for stuff we can never burn. (How much is spent on renewable energy supplies?).
Pingback: Rockall 1997 - No new oil « WOT