Carbon emissions also need to be paid for. Experts call on countries to quickly establish a "carbon debt" mechanism.
As the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to rise, there is an increasing risk that our descendants will be saddled with a massive carbon debt. Researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and international partners have called for the immediate establishment of a Carbon Removal Obligation and determination of responsibilities for carbon debt. The next EU emissions trading plan to be revised is An opportunity to import. Scholar: The world should obtain funds to implement carbon debt before the carbon budget is exhausted. Over the past few decades, governments have jointly committed to slowing global warming through agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Despite many countries ratifying these agreements, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations continue to rise. At the current rate of development, we are working hard to use up the remaining CO2 emissions available before warming reaches 1.5°C. If this so-called "carbon budget" is exhausted before the world reaches net-zero emissions, then we will have to remove a ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for every ton of carbon dioxide we emit. In other words, if we continue on our current trajectory—which now seems likely—we will accumulate a carbon debt. A new study published in the journal Nature points out that the net-zero commitments made by an increasing number of countries already assume that large carbon debts need to be compensated through long-term net negative emissions. For example, the ideal global scenario estimates in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5°C Warming