Humanity will fail on the environment

My opponent has forfeited this round and sent me a message apologizing and saying (s)he did not have the time. I have no new claims to refute. Shall I continue about what's already been said and provide more evidence on my side? Let's see what we must do to keep under the 2C goal, which some scientists say is already too much warming to handle. The IPCC said that we have AT MOST 469 billion tons (metric) of carbon left to burn for a 2/3 chance to stay under 2C. Right now, carbon emissions are at 34 billion tons per year, and if these rates remain constant (they aren't; emissions increase by about 2% every year) we will use up this budget in 469,000,000,000/34,000,000,000 = 14 years. Not from today, but from around 2012, so we will use it all by 2026 with constant emissions. If we draw a graph showing emissions from 2015 until year X and emissions remain constant, we get a rectangle. If emissions go down at a steady rate until X and hit zero that year, we get a right triangle. A right triangle with the same base and height as a rectangle has half the area of the rectangle. Thus instead of waiting nine years (2024) and abruptly stopping all emissions, we can wait 9*2 = 18 years, while steadily decreasing emissions by 1/18 of 2015 levels along the way, which is about 5.6%. There's zero evidence indicating that either scenario will happen or ANY scenario will occur to stop us from using up our budget. The efforts from society so far have bulged us off the business-as-usual scenario, but they will only delay our use up of our carbon budget by a few years or so, unless far more people agree on acting on GW. My best hope is that we will find a way to decrease emission to not only zero but actually negative emissions; we must pull carbon out of the atmosphere until the concentration of CO2 in the air hits 350 ppm (parts per million), which is what many call the safe level (right now we're at 400 ppm) Artificial photosynthesis (as you mentioned) uses CO2 to work and might help us with negative emissions. The questions here are 1) Will a significant portion of us actually use this technology soon enough? and 2) Will this pull enough CO2 out of the atmosphere to make a significant difference? Right now they're saying that artificial photosynthesis is too expensive to compete with fossil fuels. But the same once held with solar panels. But we don't have a significant portion of our energy coming from solar panels either. Now let's look at deforestation. As you stated, stopping deforestation and starting reforestation would have a chain reaction to global warming. Current deforestation accounts for 12-17% of annual greenhouse emissions, so if all deforestation ended today, that is how much emissions will go down. In 2012, Brazil relaxed its rules on deforestation of the largest rainforest in the world. The graph I showed you in round 2 with deforestation rates going down only goes to 2011, but the rates went up 28% from 2012 to 2013 mostly due to their relaxed laws. Here is a link showing more details (and it's also in my sources): http://wordpress.vermontlaw.edu... Brazil has also refused to sign a UN Pact to end deforestation by 2030 because it would go against their laws. They've reduced their deforestation a lot in the past, but it looks like the rates will grow now. The Brazilian Environmental Minister said, "Unfortunately, we were not consulted. But I think that it's impossible to think that you can have a global forest initiative without Brazil on board. It doesn't make sense." There is a tiny bit of good news here: three states of Brazil DID sign the pact, and all three of them lie within the Amazon rain forest area. I also know Peru signed it, but I cannot tell you the news about which other countries signed it because I cannot find anywhere on the internet with a list of the countries. I hope that Madagascar signed it because the deforestation there is bad. Sources: http://www.climatecentral.org... http://350.org... http://wordpress.vermontlaw.edu... http://www.scmp.com... https://en.wikipedia.org...