Pre-industrial revolution CO2 levels were at 280 parts per million (PPM). Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy, pegged us at 380 PPM CO2 during his Compton Lecture at MIT in May 2009. At the current emissions trajectory, we will hit 560 PPM CO2 around 2050. This doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels is generally accepted as the level at which the most damaging climate disasters occur.
Socolow and Pacala, co-directors of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) at Princeton University, studied stabilizing CO2 emissions at current levels rather than allowing CO2 emissions to continue to increase at historical rates.
They propose 15 “Stabilization Wedges” each having the attributes that the “technology MUST exist today”, the “technology MUST be capable of large-scale deployment” and the “emissions reductions it offers MUST be measurable”. Each wedge would reduce CO2 emissions by one gigaton (one billion tons) per year. In order to stabilize emissions at current levels 7 of these 15 wedges (or sufficient amounts of all 15) would have to be implemented.
Read the original August 2004 article from Science magazine to better understand Socolow and Pacala’s proposal to stabilize our CO2 problem.
