Graph (hand-drawn in 2008) showing that carbon emissions must peak by 2015 to keep global warming to the internationally agreed upper limit of 2°C (the point beyond which we risk runaway climate change).
I’m not sorry for sounding somewhat melodramatic, here: what we face is nothing less than the archetypical existential threat. You may well dismiss me as ‘alarmist’: but if you were in a crowded theatre and you were to hear me shout “FIRE!” — what would you do then?
When, in late 2009, I first saw The Age of Stupid, I was struck by one scene in which ‘a man in a shed’ stated, quite categorically, that humanity’s carbon emissions had to peak by around 2015 in order for us to avoid the risks of passing beyond 2°C above the average pre-industrial global temperature. Almost everyone agrees that two degrees centigrade of warming is the threshold beyond…
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Damn the Matrix 
The prices of oil, coal, gas, iron ore and copper are all falling, indicating falling demand and the imminent onset of world-wide recession. At the same time, we have a stock market bubble and record debt, with interest rates already at record lows.The over-leveraged banks and hedge funds cannot cope with another recession.
So fear not, the Crash of 2015 will see CO2 emissions peak and go into rapid decline as the recession feeds on itself, becoming a depression, and finally a total collapse. A much more rapid decline than predicted by the IPCC’s RCP 2.6, so missing +2°C easily.
Happy New Year.
It is going to be a very interesting year 2015!
Yes, I think 2015 may be the year that encapsulates Heinberg’s “The Party’s Over” best..
Also the article you posted in 2012 Are we on the cusp of global collapse?
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your blog efforts over the past year.
On new years day I had to drive past the local Bunnings store and was amazed at the larger than usual number of cars parked there. Happy little consumers.
I thought that no doubt these people would react with outrage if told they need to stop their consumerist ways. Then for some reason I recalled the picture, from many years ago, of the bridge in Hobart that had a span removed by an out of control freighter. That picture showed a car stopped on the very edge of the gap with the front wheels hanging over the edge. The driver later said that he had got out of the car and attempted to wave down approaching cars, which drove around him over the edge to their deaths.