Burning the known fossil fuels still underground would produce more greenhouse gas pollution than has been produced since the beginning of the industrial revolution, a new, first-of-its-kind, public database of global fossil fuel reserves shows.
The Global Registry of Fossil Fuels, released last Monday by Carbon Tracker and Global Energy Monitor, accounts for 75% of global oil, gas, and coal reserves, extraction, and emissions across 50,000 fields in 89 countries.
While much, if not all, of the information is available through various means, its aggregation and precision in one, free, publicly available location is novel.
The database will also enable civil society groups to hold governments accountable for permitting decisions.
“Countries like to talk about emissions, they don’t want to talk about fossil fuels,” said Mark Campanale, founder of Carbon Tracker Initiative. “Emissions are from the use of fossil fuels and you can’t do anything about emissions until you’ve actually come to a conclusion about what you’re going to do about fossil fuels.”
Sources: The Guardian, AP, Al Jazeera
Courtesy of Nexus Media News.
Featured image courtesy of RMI.
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