Children born today will see the world committed to dangerous and irreversible levels of climate change by their young adulthood at current rates, as we poured a record amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere last year. The strong rise in annual carbon dioxide emissions — of 2.5% for 2013, taking the total emitted in the year to 40 billion tonnes — means the global carbon budget, calculated as the total we can afford to emit without pushing temperatures above the critical 2 degree Celsius level, is likely to be used up within just one generation, or in thirty years from now.

That will mean children now, with no say in their contribution to carbon, will feel the effects throughout their lives. Scientists think climate change is likely to have catastrophic and irreversible effects, including rising sea levels, polar melting, droughts, floods and increasingly extreme weather. They have calculated that this threshold is likely to be breached if global emissions top 1,200 billion tonnes, giving us a “carbon budget” to stick to in order to avoid dangerous warming.

Dave Reay, professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, said: “If this were a bank statement it would say our credit is running out. We’ve already burned through two-thirds of our global carbon allowance and avoiding dangerous climate change now requires some very difficult choices. Not least of these is how a shrinking global carbon allowance can be shared equitably between more than 7bn people and where the differences between rich and poor are so immense.”

The study, by the Global Carbon Project, also found that China’s per capita emissions had surpassed those of Europe for the first time, between 2013 and 2014. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2014