Drilling toward Climate Disaster: How U.S. Oil and Gas Expansion Imperils the Paris Agreement and an Equitable Global Phase-out of Fossil Fuel Production
Abstract
Previous analysis indicates that already-developed reserves of oil, gas, and coal - those in existing fields and mines globally - contain enough carbon to push global warming well beyond 1.5°C and up to 2°C, past the limits set by the Paris Agreement (Muttitt et al. 2016). In short, there is no room in finite carbon budgets for new fossil fuel development, unless an ever-greater proportion of existing fields and mines is shut down early.
Our research applies these findings to the U.S. context. We examine the global climate implications of industry plans to rapidly develop new U.S. oil and gas reserves over the next 30 years, the same period in which net global CO2 emissions must reach zero to stay within 1.5°C of warming (IPCC 2018). Using energy industry databases, we find that the scale of planned U.S. oil and gas expansion far exceeds that of any other country from 2018 to 2050, measured both by the potential volume of new reserves developed and the CO2 unlocked by that development. New development, primarily of shale, could enable 120 billion metric tonnes of cumulative CO2 emissions to 2050, equivalent to the lifetime emissions of nearly 1,000 average U.S. coal plants. Added to the world's existing stock of developed reserves, U.S. expansion could lock the world into more than 2°C of warming - unless other countries, many of them poorer and less economically diverse than the United States, compensate by rapidly shutting down their own production. We conclude that a rapid U-turn in U.S. fossil fuel policy is needed to align both with the Paris Agreement and principles of global equity. Policies that prioritize the decline of oil and gas production rather than facilitate its expansion - e.g., ceasing new fossil fuel leases, eliminating fossil fuel production subsidies, and banning crude oil and LNG exports - should be considered as key elements of comprehensive U.S. climate policy.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMPA14A..04T
- Keywords:
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- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 6314 Demand estimation;
- POLICY SCIENCES;
- 6324 Legislation and regulations;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES;
- 6620 Science policy;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES