Some good news at last
Contained in another telling plot from James Hansen ...
Welcome new readers! I must thank several of my regulars for pointing out some typos in paragraphs 1 & 4 of my last post. The corrected version is here. See if you can spot the differences. I’ve put them in italics to make it easier. Incidentally, any updates like this are automatically shown on the Substack app. A good reason to get it.
James Hansen’s posts are always worth reading, and they usually contain great graphs to back up his words. His last was no exception. I won’t show them all here, as you can easily follow that link. He first shows that (thankfully) about half of our CO2 emissions are still being absorbed by the oceans, but how long can that continue?
But I thought I should spread the news from his message that some things are improving. All countries - with the exception of India - are now getting more energy out of each molecule of carbon dioxide emitted.
As a result, despite population increases, several countries are now producing less carbon dioxide than they were 25 years ago, as illustrated below.
The winners by that yardstick are the UK, followed by Germany, Japan, and the USA. Others haven’t done so well, especially India. China’s is still increasing too, but at least the rate of increase has slowed significantly. The world’s emissions (black line) have also stabilised. The bad news is that mankind now emitting about 50 percent more than we were at the turn of the century - just a couple of decades ago.
We haven’t done so well in this part of the world either, although in Australia at least emissions have been slowly falling since 2010. New Zealand is too small to feature on the graph, but on a per-person basis, we’re among the worst. And, despite all the talk, our performance has been dismal. While our per-gdp emissions have reduced, the gross emissions are still well above those in the 1990s. Like Australia, signs of rearguard progress are just starting to emerge in the last decade or so, as shown by the upper dashed line in the image below.
The near-term future is less rosy, with recent government moves to slow down or even reverse that progress.
Sorry about those caveats. Its certainly not all good news, as Bill McKibben reminded us recently when he reminisced on the record-breaking year just past. For better news, on that, see this heartwarming Hopeful News posting from Distilled at Substack.
My question is this: Since the UK has done so well (despite Boris), why can’t everybody else?