Today’s release of the Global Carbon budget indicates that those who are suggesting that a Trump victory will be good for Australia because it will result in higher demand for thermal coal could well be barking up the wrong tree.

Global growth in emissions per unit of output is undoubtedly slowing and the divergence between economic growth and emissions will only increase in the future.

Instead of new coal mines, this trend suggests the biggest opportunity for regional Australia will be found in clean energy, carbon sequestration, and worlds class agriculture and services industries.

The slowing rise in emissions is obviously good news but may relate as much to reduced economic growth in the last few years than anything else. Emissions could easily rebound in the future.  
 
An especially dark cloud on the horizon is the recent election of Donald Trump, who promises to gut the U.S.’s commitments to the Paris and other international agreements to limit carbon emissions.  
 
Trump’s flat-out denial of human-caused climate change and pledge to 'slam the pedal to the metal' in terms of mining and burning coal in the U.S., could not only reverse this briefly optimistic trend but could easily encourage others nations to do likewise.
 
The Paris accord is an optimistic beginning, but sadly I fear that Trump and his ilk will try to kill this dove of hope before it ever learns to fly.

The paper by Le Quéré et al. has a lot of interesting analysis of where carbon dioxide emissions are going to – only around half remain in the atmosphere, the remainder are absorbed by the oceans and by vegetation, soil etc. on land. This is the focus of the paper.

To bring these estimates up to date they also estimate carbon dioxide emissions for 2016. This is more or less an educated guess based on recent trends in emissions in different parts of the world. They project that emissions will grow 0.5 per cent in 2016 after falling 0.6 per cent in 2015. This is still a very low growth rate compared to previous recent years when emissions grew at 2-3 per cent per year globally. 
 
We need to very cautious in interpreting this recent flat-lining of carbon dioxide emissions as a permanent change in trend or peak in emissions. Climate and renewable energy policies are only one factor that will be behind this.

In the US, low gas prices due to fracking are encouraging a shift to natural gas, which has lower carbon dioxide emissions per joule of energy, and away from coal. In China, local air pollution problems are affecting coal use. These trends might not be permanent.

Also, the world economy is growing more slowly since the 2008-9 great recession/financial crisis particularly in the US and Europe but also in China. This may or may not be a permanent new trend.

Also, the Chinese economy has likely been growing more slowly than the Chinese government has admitted to. I don’t have much confidence in economic growth figures under Xi Jinping’s regime. This recession in China will end or is ending and put renewed pressure on emissions.

The past decade has witnessed unprecedented changes in the human and biophysical environments. This has made the need for detailed and frequent assessment of the carbon cycle imperative. 

All countries must carefully assess the effectiveness of their internal climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Assessment processes must be robust and transparent. Any methodology that evaluates the carbon budget will always need to be rigorously scrutinised.

This detailed report, published in Earth System Science Data indicates, through the collation of results from individual groups and research organisations around the world, that global emissions will rise slightly in 2016 and that this is the third year of low growth (under 1 per cent).

Taking into account the potential for variability and other identified exogenous factors, the report suggests continued low growth from carbon intensive fossil fuels, such as coal and cement production.

This data suggests that compliance with our nationally determined contributions and the broader objectives of the Paris Agreement at COP21 is on track.

The report must, of course, be read in combination with other relevant climate change indicators - including global surface temperatures, sea levels and minimum Arctic sea ice.

For a long time it was believed that we could not have economic growth without an expansion in carbon-intensive activities. Over the last few years the global economy has seen expansion with very low growth in carbon emissions, proving this paradigm to be false.

Now we're at a crossroads. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change we need to see a huge reduction in carbon emissions and a shift towards a low-carbon economy.

If we are to have any chance of limiting global warming to the 2-degree mark, the Paris Agreement target that seems less achievable if US President-Elect Donald Trump follows his pre-election promises, then we will need to rapidly shift to renewable energy and away from coal and gas.

This is good news, and adds further to the evidence that a strong economy does not necessarily require carbon emissions.

But to really address global warming, will require the emissions growth rate not only to shrink but to become negative — that is, for emissions themselves to fall. This will only happen with very strong commitments from world governments to implement policies that drive the transition.

The latest data is good news indeed. The data show that global economic growth no longer directly results in higher carbon dioxide emissions.

Global GDP grew by over 3 per cent during each 2015, but carbon emissions remained unchanged, and a similar picture is expected for 2016.

The first reason is energy productivity. The world used only 1 per cent more energy in 2015 to produce 3 per cent higher GDP. Better technical efficiency and a shift towards less energy intensive industries make it possible.

The second reason is that the world's energy supply is becoming cleaner. According to the BP data that underlies the study published today, global coal use fell by 2 per cent in 2015. Coal was replaced in about equal measure by renewable power and by gas, which is cleaner than coal. Oil use for transport also rose. Renewable energy output grew by 15 per cent during during 2015, though off a much lower base than the fossil fuels. Renewable energy technologies have become much cheaper, and we will see a continued rise of renewables investment.

But an effective climate change response requires rapid reductions in emissions, not just holding emissions stable. Rapid decarbonisation requires policy effort, such as emissions trading and other measures that give low carbon options an edge and that promote faster investment in energy efficiency.

R&D is also needed, to build the base for the clean energy systems of the future, from advanced renewables to storage and smart grids.

Australia can help lead the way, transitioning from an energy system heavy on coal to one that uses the practically unlimited renewables potential in this continent.

This is yet another massive effort by an international army of scientists delivering both good news and bad news.

Corinne LeQuere and her world-leading team have done two things. They've opened up a living dataset for anyone to check, including climate deniers, on a yearly basis. Secondly, they've succeeded in tightening the model we use to estimate the world's progress within the global carbon budget we have to work with up until 2050 that Meinshausen's group developed to ensure we can prevent catastrophic climate change and uphold the Paris Agreement.

The tighter model far surpasses the understanding of any climate change denier I've ever met but they can now test it for themselves if they want to.

Go ahead! You'll be startled.

On good news, what the results are saying, as I read it so far, is that the world is actually making just a little bit of progress in decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions.

This is really good news that the rise in emissions seems to be falling a little more than expected and all credit to the world's nations that are actually making an effort. I don't include Australia in this group as yet and I'm extremely worried that a Trump presidency will rewind decades of effort.

The model is tighter than ever and includes a multitude of interactions between long and short-term climate cycles, El Nino and La Nina, emissions sources from industry and how they interact with deforestation, growing fire activity, and carbon sinks that help soak up some of the excess in the ocean and forested land areas.

Two big problems remain though. As we've known for a while this study shows we've pretty much already hit the 400 parts per million threshold that might keep us below the Paris Agreement's danger zone. The past few decades have also used up a massive proportion of the budget.

What does that mean? The more we use now the more we make the adjustment to zero steeper and harder for our children. Simple as that.

In many ancient cultures the innocent were sacrificed for one more season of good harvest. Are we doing the same thing today? Those who vote to preserve their own patch might need to look further into the future because what they think they suffer now is nothing compared to what their children might suffer if we don't keep faith and focus.

Developed nations need to back off from the global share and work towards internal equity whereas developing nations need help to grow towards better standards of living that are also internally more equitable.