New tool can show how much damage new projects cause across eight areas, from heatwave deaths to loss of crops
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A new tool has been created that translates fossil-fuel emissions into on-the-ground projected climate impacts, helping scientists, policymakers and the public visualise the sizeable effects they can have.
Developed by scientists at the Australian National University, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century and the Lethal Humidity Global Council, the new tool – known as the Carbon Impacts Tracer – is built on what scientists coin the ‘simple yet robust’ metric linking carbon dioxide emissions to global average surface temperature rise. For every 1,000 billion tonnes of CO₂ emitted, global temperatures increase by approximately 0.45 °C. All subsequent calculations the tool uses are based on this fact.
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The Carbon Impacts Tracer allows users to trace project emissions to their actual impact by first selecting a fossil fuel extraction project or company. The tool then follows the pathway from emissions to global warming and its impacts across both regions and sectors.
For example, the Narrabri Gas Project in Australia – a controversial development of a major coal seam gas field – is set to be one of the biggest in New South Wales, providing up to 50 per cent of the state’s gas demand. The tool shows that over the project’s 25-year lifetime, it is estimated to emit 120 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. This figure may seem difficult to comprehend, so the tool goes one step further, calculating that in a population scenario of 9.5 billion people, the project will expose around 70,800 extra people to unprecedented heat, cause an additional 2.2 million coral colonies to be lost per bleaching event and lead to an extra 66 heat-related deaths in Europe.
Other projects analysed by the tool also have significant climate impacts. The Carmichael Mine – a large thermal coal mine and rail project in the Galilee Basin of central Queensland, Australia – is projected to lead to an additional 2,628 heat-related deaths across its project lifetime of 60 years, cause additional glacier loss of more than 115 square kilometres and lead to an additional 87.4 million coral colonies to be lost per bleaching event.
The Carbon Impacts Tracer has also analysed the effects that entire fossil fuel companies cause. BP is projected to emit 3,321 Mt of CO2 between 2024 and 2050, emissions that are projected to cause an extra 1,835 heat-related deaths, expose a further two million people to unprecedented heat and contribute to an annual food production loss of 827 billion kcal. Shell is projected to emit 3,016 Mt of CO2 between 2024 and 2050, causing an additional 55.4 million coral colonies to be lost per bleaching event, exposing more than 39,000 further people to more than one month of dangerous heat periods and pushing more than 157,000 additional people into extreme poverty (below $2.15/day).
‘One of the major challenges in climate litigation has been establishing a direct link between a government or a corporation’s actions and climate harms and suffering. Governments and corporations have argued their emissions are ‘just a drop in the ocean’ and too small to measure,’ said lead of Australian Climate Accountability Project at the Australian Human Rights Institute at the University of New South Wales and a partner in the tracer project Maria Nawaz.
‘But we can now refute this defence and show the emissions of any state or corporation can be tied to a global warming figure and then human and ecological harms. It is transformative.’
