Can the world shrink its emissions footprint without immiserating its population?
We’re seeing a brutal real-world experiment on that front right now. The coronavirus pandemic has caused the the biggest drop in emissions in history. It has also resulted in more than a million deaths and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
That’s just a foretaste of what’s to come, though. To remain within the carbon budgets needed to give a 50-50 chance of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world would need to repeat the 7% annual decline in emissions seen in 2020 every year until 2050. Think this has been a bad year for human welfare? The coming decades risk being even worse unless we can rapidly sever the centuries-long link between economic growth and carbon pollution.
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