Who's to Blame for Global Warming?
But just pointing the finger isn't the answer ...
The more important question of course, is who is going to fix it? A question currently being grappled with at COP26. The answer is that we all have to play our part. National boundaries are irrelevant.
Some numbers from a recent post by James Hansen help.
His pie graph on the left apportions the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions by country (for the year 2018 - the most recent for which data are available). The one of the right apportions the cumulative total emissions by country.
The USA and china dominate both, but China is emitting fastest at present. Their excuse is that they’ve become the factory for the world’s consumers. And it’s a good excuse too. Without those consumers the factories would stop and their coal fired power stations could close down.
In terms of cumulative emissions, the proportions between USA and China are reversed. Even though China currently has the fastest current rates, it still has a long way to go to surpass the USA’s total historical emissions.
What about the per capita rates? It’s fairer to take those into account when apportioning blame because the atmosphere knows no political boundaries. Per capita emissions by country are shown by the corresponding bar graphs below.
USA has the highest emission rates and the highest total emissions. China’s current emission rate per capita is less than half that of the USA, and since the start of the industrial revolution their per capita emissions have been only one tenth of the USA’s.
New Zealand is too small to feature on these plots, but that doesn’t mean we’re blameless and can ignore the problem. Far from it! Our current emission rates - including the effects of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture - are well above the global average. In fact, we’re among the worst. On average, each Kiwi is responsible for about 16 tons of CO2-equivalent emissions (including those agricultural emissions) per year. That amounts to about 4.3 tons of carbon per year, about the same as for USA’s shown in the left bar graph. The per capita rates in India and Africa are 10 percent or less of that. If everybody’s emission rates were the same as theirs the world would be a long way towards solving the problem. We all need to move in that direction. And we need to do it now.
Thanks for reading this. Previous posts on the intersection between Ozone, UV, Climate, and Health can be found at my UV & You area at Substack. Click below to subscribe for occasional free updates.