Furthermore, no-one counts the increase that comes from imported goods. So moving manufacturing offshore is one way of reducing your GHG emissions score. And any increase in the consumption of material goods doesn’t count when they are imported.

This article indicates that the UK reduced its GHG emissions from 775.2 million tonnes in 1990 to 658.1 million tonnes in 2006. That’s a healthy reduction of 15%. But two new reports spoil the party somewhat. It seems that in 2004 when the emissions were 657 million tonnes the real score was 979 if aviation, shipping and imported goods are taken into account.

On one count with all emissions included that’s an increase of 18% from 1992 to 2004.

Walden Bello, who along with the rest of what they call civil society thinks the Doha trade negotiations should be junked, says that derailing Doha is essential to saving the climate:

A derailment of Doha will not be a sufficient condition to formulate a strategy to contain climate change, but given the likely negative ecological consequences of a successful deal, it is a necessary condition.

The increase in shipping is bad enough, but he quotes the IPCC as saying that fuel consumption by civil aviation “could rise by nearly 350 per cent from 1992 levels by 2050.” He quotes Mander and Retallack as saying:

“Each ton of freight moved by plane uses forty nine times as much energy per kilometer as when it’s moved by ship….A two minute takeoff by a 747 is equal to 2.4 million lawn mowers running for twenty minutes.”

Many goods and even food are being transported by air.

George Monbiot in his book Heat (2006) calculates that in order to achieve a 90% reduction in emissions the British will have to reduce the number of flights they make by 87%. That is after allowing for a 20% increase in fuel efficiency. He compares the carbon efficiency of various modes of transport from London to Manchester (298km):

Plane (70% full) 63.9kg CO2 per passenger

Car (1.56 passengers) 36.9kg

Train (70 % full) 5.2kg

Coach (40 passengers) 4.3kg

Monbiot believed the UK Government was not serious about limiting air travel. He quotes the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee as calculating that the extra capacity the government was proposing meant “the equivalent of another Heathrow every 5 years”.

What the higher price of fuel will do to demand remains to be seen. Monbiot was questioning whether carbon pricing alone would be enough to achieve the deep cuts necessary. There may be some areas where demand would have to be limited by regulation or rationing rather than price. We might have to distinguish between necessary vs discretionary travel.

A 90 per cent cut in carbon emissions means the end of distant foreign holidays, unless you are prepared to take a long time getting there. It means that business meetings must take place over the internet or by means of video conferences. It means that trans-continental journeys must be made by train – or coach. It means that journeys around the world must be reserved for visiting the people you love, and they will require both slow travel and saving of carbon rations. It means the end of shopping trips in New York, parties in Ibeza, second homes in Tuscany and, most painfully to me, political meetings in Porto Alegre – unless you believe that these activities are worth the sacrifice of the biosphere and lives of the poor. (p187)

He says that the people affected most are a small but powerful group. But I think our cultural expectations in the last 40 years have gone way beyond that. People move around the world for all sorts of reasons, and many of those reasons add up to personal growth. Also can you imagine a world where cultural groups and sporting teams travel only by boat if at all?

There is a further issue that needs to be rounded up before we can have satisfactory carbon accounting – the role of soils. I recall a news item saying that a study had found that all the gains made in Britain since Kyoto in reducing emissions had been nixed by increased carbon loss from soils. The implication seemed to be that climate warming caused a net loss of carbon stored in soils to the extent of 13% from memory.

When I googled I found this 2005 study behind the pay wall so I can’t read it. Nevertheless it’s clear that there is a problem and the authors suggested a link with climate change. In 2006 they were still fingering climate change but in 2008 they seemed to think the main driver was land use change.

Obviously this factor needs to be nailed and included in the accounts along with the other three. And we are going to have to decide whether we count carbon emissions at the point of production or consumption. The latter seems logical to me if we are going to go for equity across national boundaries.

A broader question is how are we going to live on the planet? Certainly we could get by with less stuff. But are we going to forgo new fashions every year while last year’s are still perfectly serviceable?

Are we going to take the planetary carbon implications into account when we negotiate on trade matters? Should industries be located where they can be most carbon efficient? Should minerals be processed in Australia where we potentially have abundant renewable energy? Should we host a renaissance of manufacturing for the same reason?

And the consumption of services, as illustrated by the issue of air travel, is not carbon-free. Sure we can buy offsets for air travel, but should offsets be used for such ‘trivial’ purposes?

In general terms the problem is this. In the long run the whole biosphere would be best served if we returned the atmosphere roughly to its preindustrial state. I think that’s the way to go on ethical grounds as well as in terms of rational self-interest.

At present according to the Blair report (pdf) we are emitting globally about 55gt of CO2e each year. In 1990 it was 40gt and in 2050 if we take no action it will be 85gt (probably more if truth be known). 55gt of CO2e is about 15gt of carbon. By sector we do it this way, according to IPPC AR4:

If you want to decrease that by even 90% it’s pretty obvious that you have to turn the forestry number into a zero, probably a negative, and get the whole remaining diagram back to close to zero apart from agriculture, which is going to be difficult to reduce at all.

This is roughly how the carbon sits in the various parts of the planetary system (image from here):

This is how we found it (image from here):

I suspect some of the figures are a bit out of date. I think the atmospheric carbon is presently about 810gt and the pre-industrial figure 590. The super-informed amongst you will correct me. In any case we’d need to remove about 200gt of carbon from the atmosphere. But it exists as gas, mostly CO2, so you should multiply by 3.667 to get the true mass. You’d need an almighty great hole to bury 733 billion tonnes of the stuff.

The problem doesn’t finish there. As I understand it if we removed all that carbon the ocean would give up some of it’s carbon (quite a lot) as the PH returns to what it was pre-industrially. That would be would terrific for the coral reefs and the sea life.

So where will we put it? The best bet seems to me the trees and the soil, mostly the soil.

Will our life-style survive? We might get somewhere near it if we indulge in the odd bit of nuclear power and perhaps a bit of odd geoengineering.

We do have to choose, because if we do nothing that is also a choice. We can leave all the existing carbon in the atmosphere, but if we do in the long run we risk 25 meters or more of sea level rise, 3C or more temperature increase and the possibility of triggering the release of methane deposits and other nasty tipping points.

If we translate the air travel issue into the Australian situation, Ben Rose calculated that when international travel is included the sector comprises 5.2% (and no doubt increasing) of our emissions, compared with the 0.8% domestic travel reported in the national accounts. This is how our national accounts looked in 2005:

If we need to reduce that lot by 90% we will have to stay at home more, short of a miracle, unless we do a bit of geo-engineering. The choice is ours.