Global Climate Change: Something Has To Give

Mark Seall — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:10:07 +0000

In an excellent post, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times dot Earth blog poses the question - “Where would carbon dioxide emissions be if everyone on Earth was using fossil fuels at the same pace, per capita, as the United States is now?”

Using some simple math, Revkin presents some not so surprising facts:

It’s simple multiplication. Right now, the sum of global emissions of carbon dioxide by 6.6 billion very-unequal humans is about 29 billion tons a year. (An excellent database is here on historic and current emissions, from energy and cement making.)

If everyone was emitting at the British level, it’d be 66 billion tons a year. Okay, let’s try the United States. That would be 132 billion tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year, if everyone on Earth had an equal carbon footing.

We spent a couple of minutes with Excel and a global emissions database to put some of these figures into a global perspective:

Green Options » global emissions

Global Climate Change: Something Has To Give