9. Have carbon markets served to mitigate global warming?

If we stick to the objective of carbon markets and look at the results after more than a decade, we conclude that they have not worked.

Carbon bonds and the entire complex system of sales, controls and verifications of the carbon market were developed with the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide. With this mechanism it was thought that global warming would be halted and as a consequence climate change would be mitigated.

If we go to the results, the parts per million of carbon dioxide (PPM of CO2) in the atmosphere have only grown. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in 1750, they were accounted for at 280 PPM; in 1972 they were at 330 PPM; in 1992 they reached 360 PPM. The 400 PPM psychological line was broken in 2016. On May 19, 2019 a new record was set: 415 PPM.

These latest lines announce warmer winters and summers with extreme temperatures. As long as GHG emissions cannot be stopped, the growth of CO2 PPMs in the atmosphere will continue and therefore global warming will also continue to increase.

According to the NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the last five years (2015-2019) have been the hottest since 1880. The world temperature in 2018 was the fourth warmest ever recorded, placing itself only behind the 2016 (hottest) years, 2015 and 2017.

Recommended reading: PPM-CO2 the carbon letters that write our future.