Sunday, April 10, 2022

The Inconvenient Truth Is We’re the Problem

The inconvenient truth is that the world is producing about the same or less greenhouses gases per person today than it did 50 or 75 years ago.

The simple fact is that while the atmospheric level of CO2 has increased 30 percent since 1860, world population has more than quadrupled since then. Per capita CO2 emissions in the industrialized world are actually in decline, and have been for quite some time. When we look at all CO2 production, we find that global population growth and CO2 emissions track almost perfectly.

The problem is not that we are driving cars or cooling our beer in refrigerators -- it's that there are too many people. Too many people necessarily results in too many cars, too many refrigerators, and too many coal-fired electrical plants.

There are too damn many of us!
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2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Who are the "we" you mention. I can't believe that emissions per capita haven't risen greatly in China, probably India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc.

PBurns said...

Humans -- everyone on on planet Earth. Global warming is not a local or regional problem, but a global one.