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bne October 2023 Companies & Markets I 31
between achieved and required mitigations rates is very large,” the report said.
To make things worse, the scientists say their analysis is
a very conservative one, and should thus be seen as a “best case” for green growth. Their method of allocating the global carbon budget to individual countries reflects only a mini- mum interpretation of equity regarding future mitigation.
Additionally, recent estimates suggest that the remaining global carbon budgets might be even smaller than the ones used in the study, which would require even faster mitigation and decoupling rates. The scientists also estimate decoupling rates for the business-as-usual and fair-share pathways assum- ing a continuation of 2013-2019 average GDP growth rates. And the analysis assumes adequate mitigation beginning in 2023.
They also emphasise that the consumption-based CO2 emissions data used do not include emissions from agriculture, forestry and land use, or emissions from international aviation and shipping, making the conclusions even more conservative and pressing.
Decoupling green growth
The Lancet scientists cite a Financial Times article in 2022 that, for example, pointed to absolute decoupling, claiming that “green growth is already here”, and “may take us to net zero all on its own”. This sort of narrative is “greenwashing”, the authors conclude. The UN report also singled out big business, and energy companies in particular, of routinely greenwashing their efforts to reduce emissions, without taking any effective action.
If high-income countries exceed their fair-share carbon budgets, they either exacerbate climate breakdown or appro- priate the carbon budget shares of lower-income countries, or most likely they do both, the scientists say.
“There is nothing green about this. If we are to refer to what is happening in these countries as green growth, then green growth is not adequate for avoiding climate catastrophe, much less for achieving climate justice,” they continued.
“Further economic growth in high-income countries is at odds with the climate and equity commitments of the Paris Agreement,” the scientists concluded.
The report suggests one of the few solutions is to funda- mental change the way economies are run, abandoning the pursuit of infinite growth and the radical idea of reducing economic activity as one of the only real ways to reduce energy consumption. And all of this needs to be put in place over the next two years.
“To achieve Paris-compliant emission reductions, high-income countries will need to pursue post-growth demand-reduction strategies, reorienting the economy towards sufficiency, equity and human wellbeing, while also accelerating technological change and efficiency improvements,” they said, eliciting what is essentially an ESG strategy.
Post-growth demand-reduction strategies are needed in addition to technological decarbonisation efforts, says the study.
Figure 3. In all high-income countries that have recently achieved absolute decoupling, the achieved emission reductions are far from the emission reductions required to comply with their 1.5C fair-shares.
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