NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

World carbon emissions are set to rise 2 percent this year to a new record, scientists said on Monday, dashing hopes that global emissions had already peaked.

Carbon emissions had been roughly flat from 2014-16, but will increase this year mainly due to a rise in China after a two-year decline, the scientists said.

Their data, presented during negotiations among almost 200 nations in Germany about details of the 2015 Paris Agreement climate accord, are a setback to a global goal of curbing emissions to avert more downpours, heat waves, and rising sea levels.

“The plateau of last year was not peak emissions after all,” the Global Carbon Project, a group of 76 scientists in 15 countries, wrote of the findings.

Photo courtesy of Señor Codo.