How long natural resources will last

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The ecological footprint is calculated by looking at how much ecological resources such as water, timber, fish, and agricultural products are consumed and how much pollution occurs on an annual basis.

More than 29 million acres of forest were razed last year, and desertification due to soil degradation, drought, and urbanization is rapidly overtaking large parts of the planet. Chief among these changes is shifting away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Countries can also begin to reforest parts of the planet that have experienced tree loss, curb pollution in marine environments, adopt policies for responsible fisheries management, and overhaul the global food system to be less resource-intensive.

Sign up Sign in with Facebook Sign in with Apple or. Rerequest with Facebook. Carbon dioxide emissions remain trapped in the atmosphere for long periods of time, building up an atmospheric stock that leads temperatures to rise.

To keep average global temperature increase below two degrees celsius as has been agreed in the UN Paris Agreement , we can thus calculate the cumulative amount of carbon dioxide we can emit while maintaining a probability of remaining below this target temperature.

In the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC report, the budget for having a 50 percent chance of keeping average warming below two degrees celsius was estimated to be approximately billion tonnes of carbon as shown in the chart. This means that we have to leave around two-thirds of known reserves in the ground if we want to meet our global climate targets. For example, if we wanted to increase the probability of keeping warming below two degrees celsius to 80 percent, we would need stricter carbon limits, and would have to leave percent of fossil fuels untouched.

According to a widely-quoted study by Carbon Tracker, there is significant potential for this unburnable carbon to result in major economic losses. If capital investment in carbon-emitting infrastructure continues at recent rates, it estimates that up to 6.