Greenhouse emission targets
From Envirowiki
Greenhouse emission targets are agreements, international or domestic, to limit greenhouse gasses to a given level. Often they're given in the form of a percentage of a past year's emissions level by a given date in the future, like "40% reduction from 1990 levels by 2020".
Because climate change action is a highly contentious issue, and involves politicians, who're extremely good at sounding like they're promising more than they really are, emissions targets need to be treated with care, as they often contain elements of doublespeak.
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[edit] 1 Problems comparing targets
The Kyoto Protocol, the first major international agreement to limit greenhouse gasses, set an international reduction target of about 5% of 1990 levels by 2012 (only developed nations, and different for different nations). As the first, an most famous agreement, Kyoto sticks in the mind, and it's easy to make the mistake of comparing recent targets to kyoto targets.
[edit] 1.1 Differences in past years emissions
A number of recent targets, notably those of Australia and the US have used 2005 as a base line year, and others have used 2000 levels. This is problematic because in many cases emissions increased dramatically in 15 year span between the baseline years. The US target of 17% reduction by 2020 sounds impressive, but it's from 2005 levels and is roughly equivalent to a 5.5% reduction on 1990 levels, lower than it's Kyoto target, and 8 years later.
[edit] 1.2 Non-standard measurements - GDP
Most targets are are usually couched In terms of total national CO2 or CO2-e emissions for a country (Net emissions − ie. Gross emissions with and emissions absorption subtracted). But there are other ways emissions can Be measured − for example China's recently announced target for Copenhagen was 40% by 2020, which sounds great, but it's a 40% of CO2 relative to GDP, so if China's GDP increase then in absolute terms, the target becomes weaker. China's growth rate in 2008 was around 9%, but let's assume something more sane, like 3%. It's 11 years until 2020, and over 11 years 1.03^11 = 38.5%. in otherwords, a 40% cut would actually be a 1.5% cut in absolute terms (9% would be a 218% increase, but let's not go there). Of course, China currently has fairly low percapita emissions, and a large percentage of it's emissions come from manufacturing crap that gets sent to the first world.
[edit] 1.3 Percapita
While emissions percapita targets are uncommon, expect them more frequently - population models assume that population will continue to increase until the middle of this century, so in a similar way to targets relative to GDP, targets relative to population can be made to sound bigger than they really are. While Australia's recent target announcements were Net emission announcements, Kevin Rudd tried to make the targets sound bigger by claiming that Australia's population was projected to grow significantly over the coming decade, and therefore the targets would actually be bigger[reference needed]. Of course, most people saw through that ruse immediately. The planet only cares about Net pollution.
