In my last post on “coming to terms” with climate commitments, I focused on the terms and the meaning of various climate commitments. It is important to understand what they mean but it is equally important to understand the magnitude of the commitments. To make it easy, let’s look at California’s target to achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible but no later than 2045, and then to achieve net negative emissions thereafter. I will focus only on the carbon neutrality part here. California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) defines carbon neutral as sources equaling sinks. And, even though the target specifies carbon, it covers all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. So, once we have done everything we can to reduce or avoid GHGs, which is no small feat, we need to remove a quantity of emissions from the atmosphere equal to the GHGs that still remain. I will not be discussing the actual process of or options for removing emissions — that is a topic for the future — but rather the amount of the remaining emissions in California that will have to be canceled out by removals. This post provides estimates for remaining emissions at the state level and for the San Diego region.
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