Carbon Bombs

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

A group of environmentalists, lawyers, and activists have come together to identify and ‘defuse carbon bombs’– coal, oil and gas projects that have the potential to contribute significantly to global warming.

• The usage of the term ‘carbon bombs’ picked up after an investigative project of The Guardian
• The project reported the plans of countries and private companies all over the world to engage in 195 ‘carbon bomb’ projects.
• Each such project, will release huge amounts of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

What are carbon bombs?

• It is an oil or gas project that will result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over its lifetime.
• Whenever coal, oil, or gas is extracted it results in pollution and environmental degradation.
• In total, around 195 such projects have been identified world over, including in the US, Russia, West Asia, Australia and India.
• These projects will collectively overshoot the limit of emissions that had been agreed to in the Paris Agreement of 2015.

What does the investigation say?

• More than 60% of these carbon bomb projects are already underway
• Apart from coal, oil, and gas operations, the report highlighted the threat of methane, which routinely leaks from gas operations and is a powerful greenhouse gas, trapping 86 times more heat than CO2 over 20 years
• The report criticized reliance on fuel from conventional sources and not making use of emerging, green sources of energy.

What is the plan for ‘defusing’ carbon bombs?

• The network working towards this goal is called Leave It In the Ground Initiative (LINGO).
• Its mission is to leave fossil fuels in the ground and learn to live without them.
• It believes the root of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels, and the 100% use of renewable energy sources is the solution.
• LINGO aims to organise ground support for protesting such projects, challenge them through litigation, and conduct analysis and studies for the same.