Global Warming, pollution...

[johoan153]

I've been reading a lot of articles lately on how the world is getting worse and worse at controlling green house gases.

It was more alarming when we hit the years aim for how much CO2 emissions we are supposed to emit as a global team in January...

Obviously this doesnt bode well for global warming.

However I came across the following article which of posted so you can see the statistics and maybe it isnt all too doom and gloom;

 

http://theindustrypost.com/industrial-energy-use-are-your-doors-shutters-the-key/

 

Whilst it is mainly a piece about how industries can reduce their energy consumption it does also show some interesting statistics with regards to energy consumption in UK businesses. The statistics show that industry electricity energy consumption is reducing each year in the UK were as BioEnergy consumption is increasing.

 

Whilst electricity consumption on a whole is staying the same or increasing more and more companies are starting to move towards renewable energy sources so maybe next year we might make it to February before we reach our yearly emissions quota!!

[swansont]

CO2 emission from the US declined recently as well and energy demand paused. Part of that, at least was the poor economy — it has started growing again.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=25852

 

But a big part of the problem is that there are countries whose demand is growing rapidly (see: China, India), and who have been emitting far less CO2 per capita than the industrialized west does (US is at around 17 tonnes per capita, GB and much of Europe at around 7-10. China at 7, India at 2). As they catch up to us in their scope of energy production, their increases are larger than everyone else's decreases.

 

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

[johoan153]

So basically global warming wont be stopped until we have a world wide government that can actually do something about it?

[swansont]

So basically global warming wont be stopped until we have a world wide government that can actually do something about it?

 

 

We need agreements amongst the worst offenders, at the very least. The USA being high on that list, since we're high on the CO2 production list

[timo]

A world-wide agreement of the individual governments would already suffice. The most well-known attempt to achieve that are the annual UN conferences on Climate Change (you may have heard about the famous "Kyoto protocol"). A potentially important step has been undertaken with the last conference in Paris, where limiting global warming to 2 Kelvin has been put into the final protocol (which still needs to be ratified by the member countries, though ... ). That sounds like little, and saying "we'd like to limit global warming" does not exclude "we missed our goals, what a pitty". But such agreements tend to tickle down in the form of population awareness, industry awareness, and blunt instruments like money for CO2-reduction measures from the governments (state, country, multi-country structures like the European Union).