"Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history, according to the latest estimates," the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a statement.
After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record 30.6 gigatonnes (Gt), a five percent jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 Gt, the IEA said.
Moreover, the IEA estimated that 80 percent of projected emissions from the power sector in 2020 are already locked in, as they will come from power plants that are currently in place or under construction today.
"This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than two degrees C," said Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist.
Global leaders agreed a target of limiting temperature increase to two degrees C (3.6 Fahrenheit) at UN climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico last year.
For this goal to be achieved, the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere must be limited to around 450 parts per million of CO2-equivalent, only a five percent increase compared to an estimated 430 parts per million in 2000.
The IEA has calculated that in order to achieve this level, based on emissions targets countries have agreed to reach by 2020, that global energy-related emissions in 2020 must not be greater than 32 Gt.
Considering we'll most likely break that 32 Gt rate next year, and by 2020 be heading for 35 Gt or more, that goal looks to be dashed. The consequences of climate change include water and food scarcity, and Oxfam is already warning about the future of food security in the next 20 years.
"The food system is pretty well bust in the world," Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking told reporters, announcing the launch of the Grow campaign as 925 million people go hungry every day.
"All the signs are that the number of people going hungry is going up," Stocking said.
Hunger was increasing due to rising food price inflation and oil price hikes, scrambles for land and water, and creeping climate change.
Food prices are forecast to increase by something in the range of 70 to 90 percent by 2030 before taking into account the effects of climate change, which would roughly double price rises again, Oxfam said.
"Now we have entered an age of growing crisis, of shock piled upon shock: vertiginous food price spikes and oil price hikes, devastating weather events, financial meltdowns and global contagion," Oxfam said in a report.
That's bad news. A global quadrupling of food prices over the next 20 years would almost certainly lead to riots long before we ever got to 2030. Recall how food prices have played a role in the Arab Spring uprisings and those increases were much much smaller. This is why the Pentagon keeps warning that climate change (and its effects on food and water availability) is the number one threat to US security in the future.
And it will only get worse from here.
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