http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jan/15/carbonfootprints-carbonemissions/print
Ethical Living
Emission impossible
Negative carbon footprints are our only hope, says the Worldwatch 
Institute – and sets out a 10-step roadmap to achieving this lofty goal. 
Can you think of any other ways?
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* Leo Hickman
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 January 2009 18.07 GMT
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Eggborough power station, near Selby. Climate change. Global warming. 
Environment. Photograph: John Giles/PA

Negative emissions - blue-sky or pie-in-sky thinking? Photograph: John 
Giles/PA

The much-respected Washington DC-based Worldwatch Institute has just 
published The State of the World 2009, the 26th edition of its annual 
status report into the planet's environmental health. You won't be 
surprised to hear that the prognosis isn't exactly rosy. In fact, having 
pored over the institute's previous reports in recent years, I was a 
little shocked to see just how bleak the institute now sees it.

The report's focus this year is envisioning how climate change will pan 
out over the coming century. One of the most arresting discussions 
within the report is the chapter written by Dr Bill Hare, a scientist 
based at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, entitled 'A 
Safe Landing for the Climate'. Hare argues that, in effect, we will have 
to achieve negative carbon emissions - "neg-emissions", if you like - by 
2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change:

"Returning to warming levels significantly below 2 degrees Celsius 
implies the need for large long-term extraction of CO2 from the air and 
the storage of the captured carbon in secure underground reservoirs, 
which will need to be watched and managed over many centuries, perhaps 
millennia. Extracting CO2 from the air appears to be a necessity that 
must be confronted within the next 50 years."

Reading this on the day that the green (ha!) light is being given by the 
UK government to the third runway at Heathrow airport and you realise 
just how fast the gap is growing between what the science is saying and 
what the reality on the ground (and in the air) appears to be. Let's be 
honest, as things stand today, we haven't got a cat's chance of 
answering the increasingly despairing cries of the scientific community 
charged with the heavy responsibility of mapping out the implications of 
fast-rising levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

The Worldwatch Institute does, at least, have a stab at spelling out 
what our species needs to do by setting out its "10 key challenges to 
avoiding catastrophic climate change":

1) Thinking long-term At the core of the climate problem is the 
likelihood that future generations will pay with a deteriorating global 
environment for the refusal of current generations to live in balance 
with the atmosphere. Visionary leaders will need to marshal the public 
to take responsibility for the impacts of today's behaviour on the 
future and to act accordingly.

2) Innovation. The emissions shift will require technologies that break 
the carbon link to energy consumption with as little sacrifice of price 
and convenience as possible. A range of renewable technologies can 
produce electricity and meet heating and cooling needs. Such 
technologies include buildings that produce more energy than they 
consume and "smart grids" that use information technology to match 
renewably produced electricity precisely to demand.

3) Population Rarely addressed in the context of climate change, future 
population trends could make the difference between success and failure 
in the long-term balance of human activities, atmosphere, and climate. 
The world's population is likely to stop growing and then gradually 
decline for a period when women gain the full capacity to decide for 
themselves whether and when to have children.

4) Changing lifestyles: The assumption that the "good life" requires 
ever more individual consumption, more meat-eating, ever larger homes 
and vehicles, and disposable everything will need to fade. A spirit of 
shared and equitable material sacrifice can replace it - with no loss of 
what really matters, such as active good health, strong communities, and 
time with family.

5) Healing land: Managed for the task, the Earth's soil and vegetation 
can remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Agricultural 
landscapes can accomplish this while improving food and fibre production 
and minimising the need for artificial fertiliser and fossil-fuel-driven 
tilling and raising farmer incomes.

6) Strong institutions: As with the deteriorating global economy, the 
global nature of climate change demands international cooperation and 
sound governance. The strength and effectiveness of the United Nations, 
multilateral banks, and major national governments are essential to 
addressing global climate change. These institutions - and those 
emerging from the hoped-for Copenhagen climate agreement in 2009 - 
require strong public support for their critical work.

7) The Equity imperative: No climate agreement will succeed without 
support from those countries that have so far contributed little to 
human-induced climate change, have low per-capita emissions, and stand 
to face the biggest challenges in adapting to the coming changes. A pact 
that is fair to developing and industrialised countries alike is essential.

8) Economic stability: With the world now fixated on the sputtering 
global economy, addressing climate change will demand attention to costs 
and the promise of improving rather than undermining long-term economic 
prospects. A climate agreement will have to operate effectively during 
anaemic as well as booming economic periods, facing squarely the 
challenges of poverty and unemployment while continually reducing 
emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

9) Political stability: A world beset by conflict and terrorism is far 
less likely to prevent dangerous climate disruption than one at peace. 
Security and climate must be addressed simultaneously. On the positive 
side, negotiating an effective and fair climate agreement offers 
countries a needed opportunity to practice peace and re-frame 
international relations along cooperative rather than competitive lines.

10) Mobilising for change: The way to deal with climate change we 
ourselves are causing is to see the opportunity for a new global economy 
and new ways of living in the effort to bring net greenhouse gas 
emissions to an end. There's no guarantee such a transition will be easy 
- or even possible. But a global movement to make the effort is needed 
now, and could yield new jobs, new opportunities for peace, and global 
cooperation beyond what humanity has ever achieved.

All good sensible stuff, in my view, if a little heavy on the idealism 
and light on the detail about how any of this can actually be 
implemented effectively. But has it missed anything out? Should any of 
these be prioritised over others? Do you have more hope, perhaps, and 
believe we can reach a state of "neg-emissions" by 2050?