Updated Carbon Law Reveals: Emissions Must Drop 12% Per Year
I
A recent investigation by Swedish NGO, Klimatkollen, calculated that, starting in 2025, the world must halve emissions every five years. This is a pace equivalent to emission cuts of around 12% per year.
But even if the world manages to adhere to the new 12% a year reduction pace, the future is not a safe place. The calculation implies only a 50/50 chance of limiting global warming to about 1.5°C, based on a global carbon budget of 305 billion tons of CO₂, as well as 5.5 billion tons of CO₂ in remaining residual emissions by 2050 that can be offset by carbon capture and storage. And the calculation does not take into account one of the core principles in the Paris Agreement: that those with more responsibility and capability should go faster.
Frida Berry Eklund, co-founder of Klimatkollen and EU Climate Pact Ambassador, states: 'Citizens have a right to know what science-based emission cuts in line with 1.5°C means in practice, to be able to hold decision makers in business and governments to account. We need to focus on what's needed, not what's politically possible, to give our children a fighting chance of survival."
Carbon Law is a scientifically based framework presented by Professor Johan Rockström, Johan Falk, and Owen Gaffney in 2017, inspired by Moore's law of computer development, which provides the rule of thumb – halving emissions every decade from 2020 onwards. However, we are now five years behind schedule as global emissions continue to rise, hence the new calculations.
The updated Carbon Law calculations show what is required at the global level to limit global warming to 1.5 C: a halving of emissions every five years starting 2025. But the rule of thumb annual emission cuts of 12% , can also be a guiding light for citizens to hold countries, companies, and organizations to account.
Owen Gaffney, co-founder of the Exponential Roadmap Initiative says: 'The remaining carbon dioxide budget for 1.5°C is currently being consumed at a rate of 1% every month. To avoid critical tipping points in the climate systems, emissions must be reduced as quickly as possible while also avoiding economic collapse. That we reached 1.5°C last year is a clear signal that we must intensify our efforts to protect the Earth's climate system.'
It is clear that the world is rapidly running out of time to stop catastrophic climate impacts. But pushing for emission cuts of 12% annually presents a science-aligned rule of thumb for citizens everywhere to hold decision makers to account. We need deep emission reductions—now.
Core Concept of the Carbon Law:
1. Halve global CO₂ emissions every decade from 2020 onward (according to the updated calculations this now means halving every five years from 2025)
2. Double carbon removal technologies and capacity every decade
3. Reach net-zero emissions by around 2050
According to Frida Berry Eklund, "The strength of the 12% emission cuts per year number is that it gives citizens, companies and countries, a clear science-aligned rule of thumb to compare climate action to. However, the rule of thumb does not take into account the core principle of the Paris Agreement, that those with high historical emissions and ability to transition need to cut emissions faster."
With another recent study stating that 89 % of the global population is in favor of stronger climate policies and the Actuaries Climate Risk Index warning of global economic collapse if we abstain from reducing the emissions, the green light cannot be any greener for the politicians to act.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
Arctic melting slowed in the past two decades. Is that a good sign?
The melting of Arctic ice has been one of the most profound ripple effects from climate change, an impact often depicted with images of a lone polar bear stranded on a dwindling piece of sea ice. Now, a new study has found that ice has been melting slower over the past two decades across all seasons — even under a record hot atmosphere. From 2005 to 2024, scientists say Arctic sea ice has been declining at its slowest rate for any 20-year period since satellite measurements began in 1979. Using two different datasets, the team found that the melt rate over the past 20 years has been at least twice as slow as the longer-term rate. The slowdown is temporary, models show. It may continue for another 5 to 10 years, and afterward, sea ice may melt faster than the long-term average — offsetting any short reprieve that we may have had. 'Even though there is increased emissions [and] increased global temperatures, you can still get periods where you have very minimal loss of Arctic sea ice for sustained periods,' said Mark England, lead author of the study published Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters. Here's what to know about variations in how ice declines in the Arctic. Let's boil the factors influencing Earth's climate down to a simple equation: humans and the planet's natural cycles. The most common driver in Earth's natural cycles is the difference in how much energy is exchanged between the ocean and atmosphere, said Alex Crawford, an assistant professor of environment and geography at University of Manitoba in Canada who was not involved in the study. 'There's always energy going back and forth between the atmosphere and ocean,' Crawford said. 'For various reasons, the oceans can store much, much more energy than the atmosphere.' In some years, he said the world's oceans take in a little more energy than normal, which will make the global atmosphere cooler than normal. If the oceans take in a little less energy than normal, then the global atmosphere will be warmer than normal. 'The most famous example of this is El Niño and La Niña, but there's also longer-term variability that can take place over several decades and either amplify (e.g., the 2010s) or weaken (e.g., the 2000s) the global warming trend,' Crawford said. 'This is all normal.' Over the past two decades, England said the planet's natural cycles perhaps helped create cooler waters around the Arctic that favored sea ice growth. Still, added heat from human activities has counteracted this growth and led to an overall deficit. For perspective, without climate change, these natural variations may have even caused the sea ice to grow in these past two decades, England said. Even under high greenhouse gas emissions, scientists have found that periodic slowdowns do occur. In the study, the team analyzed past climate models that showed these slower ice losses over the past two decades. They found these slowdowns occurred about 20 percent of the time in simulations. 'This isn't some infrequent rare event. This is something which should be expected as a part of the way that the climate system evolves,' said England, who conducted the study as a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter and is now an assistant professor at UC Irvine. In addition, the team found the current slowdown has a 50 percent chance of lasting for five more years and a 25 percent chance of lasting another 10 years. Polar scientist Alexandra Jahn, who was not involved in the research, said her own work showed slower Arctic sea ice melt occurred commonly across 10-year periods — even in the presence of human-caused warming. After this slowdown episode ends, Jahn said 'eventually we'll see a decline again.' Multiple factors make clear that climate change is not slowing down. Carbon dioxide concentrations are still at their highest levels in human history, growing at its fastest rate in our observed records. Earth's hottest years have all occurred in just the past decade, with multiple record years in the Arctic. 'If you look at global temperatures, they are definitely not slowing down,' England said. 'The debate now is whether they are speeding up.' Additionally, climate models showed these slowdowns are possible even under a continued warming world. Similar to the past two decades, Earth's natural cycles may favor more ice growth and slow down melting. Think of the Arctic sea ice trend like a ball rolling down a hill, explained climate scientist Ed Hawkins. The ball may hit some bumps that slow it down, but it will be heading toward the bottom as greenhouse gas emissions continue. Even though the rate of Arctic ice melt has slowed, ice is still declining in large quantities. Using two different datasets, study authors found the melt rate over the past 20 years has been around 0.35 and 0.29 million square kilometers per decade (depending the dataset). Since 2010, the team found the volume of ice loss amounted to about 0.4 million cubic kilometers cubed each decade. Overall, sea ice conditions at the end of the summer are at least 33 percent lower now than they were 45 years ago. Although the Arctic is low, England said it's better than the area being completely ice free. But he expects an accelerated loss once this period subsides. On average, he said sea ice loss has amounted to around 0.8 million square kilometers per decade over the long term. The subsequent ice melt could be 0.6 million square kilometers per decade faster than the broader long-term decline, the study found. 'This temporary period can't go on forever,' England said. 'It's bit like a kind of sugar rush. It feels good … and at some point it will kind of crash.'
The Verge
4 hours ago
- The Verge
Google says a typical AI text prompt only uses 5 drops of water — experts say that's misleading
Amid a fierce debate about the environmental toll of artificial intelligence, Google released a new study that says its Gemini AI assistant only uses a minimal amount of water and energy for each text prompt. But experts say that the tech giant's claims are misleading. Google estimates that a median Gemini text prompt uses up about five drops of water, or 0.26 milliliters, and about as much electricity as watching TV for less than nine seconds, roughly 0.24 watt-hours (Wh), which produces around 0.03 grams of carbon dioxide emissions. Google's estimates are lower than previous research on water- and energy-intensive data centers that undergird generative AI models. That's due in part to improvements in efficiency that the company has made over the past year. But Google also left out key data points in its study, leading to an incomplete understanding of Gemini's environmental impact, experts tell The Verge. 'They're just hiding the critical information.' 'They're just hiding the critical information,' says Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside. 'This really spreads the wrong message to the world.' Ren has studied the water consumption and air pollution associated with AI, and is one of the authors of a paper Google mentions in its Gemini study. A big issue experts flagged is that Google omits indirect water use in its estimates. Its study included water that data centers use in cooling systems to keep servers from overheating. Those cooling systems have sparked concerns for years about how data centers might exacerbate water shortages in drought-prone regions. Now, attention is shifting to how much more electricity data centers might need to accommodate new AI models. Growing electricity demand has triggered a spate of new plans to build gas and nuclear power plants, which also consume water in their own cooling systems and to turn turbines using steam. In fact, a majority of the water a data center consumes stems from its electricity use — which Google overlooks in this study. As a result, with Google's water estimate, 'You only see the tip of the iceberg, basically,' says Alex de Vries-Gao, founder of the website Digiconomist and a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Institute for Environmental Studies who has studied the energy demand of data centers used for cryptomining and AI. Google left out another important metric when it comes to power consumption and pollution. The paper shares only a 'market-based' measure of carbon emissions, which takes into account commitments a company makes to support renewable energy growth on power grids. A more holistic approach would be to also include a 'location-based' measure of carbon emissions, which considers the impact that a data center has wherever it operates by taking into account the current mix of clean and dirty energy of the local power grid. Location-based emissions are typically higher than market-based emissions, and offer more insight into a company's local environmental impact. 'This is the groundtruth,' Ren says. Both Ren and de Vries-Gao say that Google should have included the location-based metric, following internationally recognized standards set by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Google's paper cites previous research conducted by Ren and de Vries-Gao and argues that it can provide a more accurate representation of environmental impact than other studies based on modeling that lack first-party data. But Ren and de Vries-Gao say that Google is making an apples-to-oranges comparison. Previous work was based on averages rather than the median that Google uses, and Ren faults Google for not sharing numbers (word count or tokens for text prompts) for how it arrived at the median. The company writes that it bases its estimates on a median prompt to prevent outliers that use inordinately more energy from skewing outcomes. 'You only see the tip of the iceberg, basically.' When it comes to calculating water consumption, Google says its finding of .26ml of water per text prompt is 'orders of magnitude less than previous estimates' that reached as high as 50ml in Ren's research. That's a misleading comparison, Ren contends, again because the paper Ren co-authored takes into account a data center's total direct and indirect water consumption. Google has yet to submit its new paper for peer review, although spokesperson Mara Harris said in an email that it's open to doing so in the future. The company declined to respond on the record to a list of other questions from The Verge. But the study and accompanying blogs say that Google wants to be more transparent about the water consumption, energy use, and carbon emissions of its AI chatbot and offer more standardized parameters for how to measure environmental impact. The company claims that it goes further than previous studies by factoring in the energy used by idling machines and supporting infrastructure at a data center, like cooling systems. 'While we're proud of the innovation behind our efficiency gains so far, we're committed to continuing substantial improvements in the years ahead,' Amin Vahdat, VP/GM of AI & Infrastructure for Google Cloud, and Jeff Dean, chief scientist of Google DeepMind and Google Research, say in a blog. Google claims to have significantly improved the energy efficiency of a Gemini text prompt between May 2024 and May 2025, achieving a 33x reduction in electricity consumption per prompt. The company says that the carbon footprint of a median prompt fell by 44x over the same time period. Those gains also explain why Google's estimates are far lower now than studies from previous years. Zoom out, however, and the real picture is more grim. Efficiency gains can still lead to more pollution and more resources being used overall — an unfortunate phenomenon known as Jevons paradox. Google's so-called 'ambitions-based carbon emissions' grew 11 percent last year and 51 percent since 2019 as the company continues to aggressively pursue AI, according to its latest sustainability report. (The report also notes that Google started excluding certain categories of greenhouse gas emissions from its climate goals this year, which it says are 'peripheral' or out of the company's direct control.) 'If you look at the total numbers that Google is posting, it's actually really bad,' de Vries-Gao says. When it comes to the estimates it released today on Gemini, 'this is not telling the complete story.' Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Justine Calma Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Analysis Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Energy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Environment Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Google Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Report Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Science Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech
Forbes
5 hours ago
- Forbes
Updated Carbon Law Reveals: Emissions Must Drop 12% Per Year
The world is rapidly running out of time to stop catastrophic climate impacts. According to an investigation by Swedish NGO, Klimatkollen, carbon emissions must be halved by 2030 for a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. That is equivalent to emission reductions of about 12 % t per year. This investigation, in collaboration with the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, seeks to answer what pace of emission cuts is needed to meet Paris Agreement targets starting in 2025. I A recent investigation by Swedish NGO, Klimatkollen, calculated that, starting in 2025, the world must halve emissions every five years. This is a pace equivalent to emission cuts of around 12% per year. But even if the world manages to adhere to the new 12% a year reduction pace, the future is not a safe place. The calculation implies only a 50/50 chance of limiting global warming to about 1.5°C, based on a global carbon budget of 305 billion tons of CO₂, as well as 5.5 billion tons of CO₂ in remaining residual emissions by 2050 that can be offset by carbon capture and storage. And the calculation does not take into account one of the core principles in the Paris Agreement: that those with more responsibility and capability should go faster. Frida Berry Eklund, co-founder of Klimatkollen and EU Climate Pact Ambassador, states: 'Citizens have a right to know what science-based emission cuts in line with 1.5°C means in practice, to be able to hold decision makers in business and governments to account. We need to focus on what's needed, not what's politically possible, to give our children a fighting chance of survival." Carbon Law is a scientifically based framework presented by Professor Johan Rockström, Johan Falk, and Owen Gaffney in 2017, inspired by Moore's law of computer development, which provides the rule of thumb – halving emissions every decade from 2020 onwards. However, we are now five years behind schedule as global emissions continue to rise, hence the new calculations. The updated Carbon Law calculations show what is required at the global level to limit global warming to 1.5 C: a halving of emissions every five years starting 2025. But the rule of thumb annual emission cuts of 12% , can also be a guiding light for citizens to hold countries, companies, and organizations to account. Owen Gaffney, co-founder of the Exponential Roadmap Initiative says: 'The remaining carbon dioxide budget for 1.5°C is currently being consumed at a rate of 1% every month. To avoid critical tipping points in the climate systems, emissions must be reduced as quickly as possible while also avoiding economic collapse. That we reached 1.5°C last year is a clear signal that we must intensify our efforts to protect the Earth's climate system.' It is clear that the world is rapidly running out of time to stop catastrophic climate impacts. But pushing for emission cuts of 12% annually presents a science-aligned rule of thumb for citizens everywhere to hold decision makers to account. We need deep emission reductions—now. Core Concept of the Carbon Law: 1. Halve global CO₂ emissions every decade from 2020 onward (according to the updated calculations this now means halving every five years from 2025) 2. Double carbon removal technologies and capacity every decade 3. Reach net-zero emissions by around 2050 According to Frida Berry Eklund, "The strength of the 12% emission cuts per year number is that it gives citizens, companies and countries, a clear science-aligned rule of thumb to compare climate action to. However, the rule of thumb does not take into account the core principle of the Paris Agreement, that those with high historical emissions and ability to transition need to cut emissions faster." With another recent study stating that 89 % of the global population is in favor of stronger climate policies and the Actuaries Climate Risk Index warning of global economic collapse if we abstain from reducing the emissions, the green light cannot be any greener for the politicians to act.
