STANDARD: You recently presented the report "The Greenhouse Gas Budget for Austria", deriving Austria's share from the globally remaining greenhouse gas budget from 2017 onwards. When will it be used up?

Steininger: By the most generous calculation, Austria – if emissions were to remain at today's levels – will have completely used up its budget by 2035 at the latest. The basic idea is that by 2050 we not only need to be emissions-neutral, but according to the Paris Climate Agreement we may only emit a total of 1,000 to 1,500 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents between now and then – significantly less than we have emitted over the last 25 years. We therefore need to initiate a turnaround immediately. These are not horror scenarios; our calculations are based on a model that is favourable for Austria, one that only gradually reduces today's high emissions to globally equal per-capita emissions by 2050.

STANDARD: You also lead the study "Costs of Inaction" (Coin). How costly will climate change be?

Steininger: If no countermeasures are taken, climate change will cause damages in Austria of between four and 8.8 billion euros annually by around 2050. I like to compare the lower figure with the last tax reform. We would then need to raise that same amount of funding every single year to deal with the consequences of climate change. The climate developments up to the middle of this century can hardly be altered now, as they are caused by greenhouse gases we have already emitted.

<link http: derstandard.at klimaexperte-steininger-es-bringt-nichts-schnell-ein-eu-papier-abzugeben external-link-new-window external link in new>Click here to read the full interview on the Standard website.