Mitigation attempts to reduce these flows and thus reduce the rate of increase of the stock of carbon in the atmosphere, with the ultimate goal of stabilizing or reducing it to safe levels. Without mitigation, and assuming that the high-growth developing countries reach current advanced-country levels of annual per capita CO2 emissions (10 to 11 tons, though much higher in North America), the current global average of 4.8 tons will almost double in 50 years, to 8.7 tons.