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A coal power plant near Beijing, China. REUTERS / Jason Lee
COP24 is currently in full swing in Poland. A conference on the climate with the aim of setting to music the Paris agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gases, in particular of CO2. And it should be activated because the account is not there. This is shown by the latest assessment of our emissions: the "Global Carbon Budget", the world atlas of carbon, in French. It was made public this Wednesday, and this year again, we released more CO2 in the atmosphere.
+ 1.6% in 2017, + 2.7% in 2018: year after year, humanity is still spewing more CO2 in the atmosphere. Sign that despite the speeches our societies are still dependent on fossil fuels.
Philippe Ciais is Research Director at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE). He contributed to this work and explains that " the increase in emissions is actually linked to the human activities that are transport, - we use for example oil - ; heating, - the so-called residential sector - ; and also energy production - if electricity is produced with coal plants, CO2 is also emitted . "
Coal, oil, gas, all emissions related to these fossil fuels are rising. An untenable trajectory if one wants to respect the commitments of the Paris agreement.
" Emissions must reach a peak in the coming years and, above all, they must drop sharply. And it would be necessary that between 2030 , - in 12 years - , and now, they decrease of 25% to contain the global warming of 2 degrees and about 50 to 55% to contain this warming under 1,5 degrees ", continues Philippe Ciais.
Unfortunately, we do not take the road. China and the United States are seeing their emissions increase in 2018, they are already the two largest emitters, responsible for almost half of the CO2 released by man in the atmosphere.
► (Re) read: The COP 24, a climate conference against a background of multiple uncertainties