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Carbon-based emissions up after brief lull
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
December 5th, 2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
December 5th, 2011
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
After a brief lull, global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year. It's disheartening news among those who thought the recession in the U.S. will translate into less air pollution.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to an analysis released by the Global Carbon Project, emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon was almost the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.It's feared that the increase in emissions will make it nigh impossible to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.
Researchers said the high growth rate reflected a bounce-back from the 1.4 percent drop in emissions in 2009, the year the recession had its biggest impact.
These figures are highly worrisome figure and signify little progress in limiting greenhouse gases. The growth rate in the 1990s was closer to 1 percent annually.
The combustion of coal represented more than half of the growth in emissions, the report found.
In the U.S., emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the recession year of 2009 -- but rose by just over 4 percent last year. The U.S. is the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pumping 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere last year.
However, the United States was surpassed several years ago by China, where emissions grew 10.4 percent in 2010, with that country injecting 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
Delegates from 191 countries met in Durban, South Africa, for yet another negotiating session in a global control effort that has been going on, with little to no success for the better part of two decades.
"Each year those emissions go up, there's another year of negotiations, another year of indecision," Glen P. Peters, a researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo said. "There's no evidence that this trajectory we've been following the last 10 years is going to change."
Scientists say the rapid growth of emissions is warming the Earth, threatening the ecology and putting human welfare at long-term risk. Ways to limit emissions have been met sharp political resistance in many countries, including the U.S., because doing so would entail higher energy costs.
The new figures show a continuation of a trend in which developing countries, including China and India, have surpassed the wealthy countries in their overall greenhouse emissions.
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