March 8, 2007 — If the world wants to get serious about cutting carbon emissions and controlling global warming, we need to divvy up an international carbon pie, says one researcher.
Such a pie, which would set an upper limit on carbon greenhouse emissions per person worldwide, would allow some poorer countries to sell pieces to richer nations, which emit more carbon per capita.
"Unless you constrain the amount (of fossil fuels) that can be burned, you're never going to bring carbon dioxide down," regardless of how much energy conservation and fuel efficiency we achieve, said researcher Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He published his strategy in the March 9 issue of the journal Science.
"I'm not saying for a minute that we don't need all those things," Broecker told Discovery News. "But they will fall short."
That means we will be stuck with a warmer world for centuries — which will be enough time to melt Greenland's ice and raise sea level several meters, he said.
"During the last interglacial (the warm period before the last Ice Age), sea level stood six to seven meters higher than today," said Broecker. That could easily happen again if we don't cut carbon emissions immediately, he added.
