According to the ABC’s Vote Compass, a majority of voters has put the environment ahead of the economy as the top election issue. Yet the budget we haven’t heard about in this so-called "climate election" is the carbon budget. That’s the budget set by the laws of physics and chemistry to hold global warming to the safer side of 2 degrees.

 
Barring some speculative technology deployed in the next decade on massive, unprecedented scales that pulls down more carbon from the atmosphere than we are putting up, the emissions budget that humans must not exceed is 1000 billion tonnes of carbon – give or take. That’s the total carbon budget – from the beginning of the industrial revolution – to keep global warming strictly below 2 degrees with at least a 2/3 chance.
Read the full Sydney Morning Herald article by Prof Penny Sackett and Prof Will Steffen here.