Will global growth continue to drive global warming and hence lead to our undoing? Hawksworth's baseline scenario, a "business as usual" benchmark in which growth increases and energy efficiency improves in line with current trends, could result in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels more than doubling by 2050, to around 550 ppm (parts per million). That would exceed the 450–500 ppm levels that scientists deem maximally acceptable.
Hawksworth's favored scenario, in which annual global GDP growth is not constrained, involves a significant shift from fossil fuels to renewable and nuclear energy, improved energy efficiency, and using carbon capture and storage technologies. In this scenario, CO2 levels would fall 17 percent by 2050, to a stable concentration around 450 ppm.
Achieving this would mean holding E7 emissions growth between 2004 and 2050 to just 30 percent, while reducing the growth of G7 emissions by an average of just over 50 percent. Can it be done? Hawksworth is cautiously optimistic, calculating that moving to a low-carbon economy could cost no more than a year's worth of global GDP growth.
To be sure, making predictions is hard, especially about the future. In both of his studies, Hawksworth presents a wide range of possibilities. Any number of things could throw the safest estimate out of whack. Take oil, for example. According to a February report from the Government Accountability Office, "most studies estimate that oil production will peak sometime between now and 2040." Oil accounts for a third of global energy consumption, says the GAO, and it's pretty expensive now. What happens when the world's oil supply begins to decline, say around 2050?
Maybe the subprime mess isn't so bad after all.
Edward Teach is articles editor of CFO.
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