creation of a different planet, part 1

Preface, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

blindly terraforming Earth

Consider the total CO2 emissions from the burning of fossils fuels from 18th century through 2004. Who emitted the most?

Europe and the USA emitted 59% of all CO2 from fossil fuels. Another 25% came from China, Russia, Japan, Canada, Australia, and India. Ships and aircraft emitted 4%. The rest of the world (175 nations by today’s count) contributed only 12.5%.

To see who is doing the emitting today, consider one recent year of CO2 emissions, the year 2004:

From the many notable aspects of these data, some of highlights:

• Per capita, the USA and Canada emit twice the CO2 of any other country in the top 18. Canada has the excuse of being cold. The US might note that may nations with a high standard of living get by with half its per capita emissions.
• The USA with 4.6% of the world’s population emits 22% of the CO2. In addition, the United States has no national CO2 emission reduction policy and hasn’t signed on to the Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• The top 10 nations with about half the world’s population emit 66% (two thirds) of all CO2. 197 nations produce the other third. We don’t need a UN blessed emissions protocol; we just need these 10 nations to come to some agreement — the rest can be persuaded to follow.
• The top 8 current emitters are not so different from the top 8 all-time emitters.
• If the USA cut its per capita emissions in half (to a level equal to Japan’s), global emissions would decline by 11% — even if no other nation took any action.
• Three of the top 25 nations have per capita CO2 emissions less than 2 tons/person: India, Indonesia, and Brazil. They are on the list due to their population size. Of these, India makes the US news because of the off-shoring of software jobs and call-center work, Brazil because of its ethanol production and the burning of the Amazon, but Indonesia hardly at all in spite of being the fourth most populous country in the world (after China, India, and the USA).
• Three other nations — Thailand, Turkey, and Mexico with per capita CO2 emissions in the 3.2-4.2 range — are moderately developed and have large populations (64 to 105 million). Thailand appears in the US news by virture of its sex trade, Turkey because of its action against the Kurds in Iraq, and Mexico due to immigration issues. The news media would serve us better by reporting a more complete picture of these countries.

CO2 emissions data: Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J. Andres. 2007. Global, Regional, and National Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. [Note, these original data sets use metric tonnes of carbon. In the above I've converted that to metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 = C * 3.67) which appears to be the more common measure in non-US publications.]

Preface, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

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