Hundreds of new Chinese factories belching smoke. Americans tooling around in old gas hogs. Coal-fired plants that strain to power air conditioners. A couple billion incandescent bulbs. Leaky, drafty homes. Wildfires. Shrinking ice. Warming duff.
Add it all up, and concentrations of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide — produced by the grinding combustion that drives modern life and fuels the world economy — have been accelerating.
A new study coordinated by scientists at California’s Carnegie Institution found that worldwide CO2 emissions have been speeding up at three times the rate seen in the 1990s. Instead of rising at 1.1% per year, emissions have leapt to 3.1% per year between 2000 and 2004.
“In many parts of the world, we are going backwards,” said Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, in a news release about the findings.
Can you say “dustbowl?” “Extinctions?” “Coastal flooding?”
A better word might be “clueless.” Will we simply drive the planet off the cliff?
The research blames the increased rate on several factors, including rising population and an increase in the amount of energy needed to produce cars, clothes, computers and the like. Essentially the trend hinges on the lack of action by developed nations to reduce emissions.
“No region is decarbonising its energy supply,” states the study, Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions, published in the early on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Even more disturbing, the study suggests that the trend toward energy efficiency — doing things like driving less in cars that burn fewer gallons, producing electricity with plants that burn less fuel per kilowatt — has actually reversed. Carbon “intensity” is going up.
“Despite the scientific consensus that carbon emissions are affecting the world’s climate, we are not seeing evidence of progress in managing those emissions in either the developed or developing countries,” the authors reported.
Want more bad news? Just as with underestimates of sea ice melt and glacier retreat, the study showed that “actual global emissions since 2000″ grew faster than the worst-case scenarios worked up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“The trends relating energy to economic growth are definitely headed in the wrong direction,” Field said in the release.
More detail:
The acceleration of carbon emissions is greatest in the exploding economies of developing regions, particularly China, where the increases mainly reflect increasing per capita gross domestic product.
The study divided the world into the USA, the European Union, Japan, the nations of the former Soviet Union, China, India, and three regions covering the rest of the world.
Between 2000 and 2004 the developing countries accounted for a large majority of the growth in emissions, even though they contribute only about 40% of total emissions.
In 2004, 73% of the growth in global emissions came from the developing and least developed economies, comprising 80% of the world’s population.
That same year the developed areas (including the Former Soviet Union), contributed about 60% to the total emissions. These countries account for 77% of the cumulative emissions since the start of the industrial revolution.
Between 1980 and 2004, total emissions in the developed areas (USA, Europe, Japan, and other smaller economies) increased as a result of fast growth in per-capita gross domestic product, coupled with relatively slight increases in population. This growth was partially offset by decreases in the amount of energy needed to make each unit of product.
Turning the trend around depends on two kinds of actions, according to the study.
First, people must reduce the amount of energy burned in every day life. Second, people must reduce the amount of carbon spewed into the air.
“Solving the first part of the puzzle requires shifting more of the economy toward activities like service industries and information technology, where emissions can be lower, and emphasizing energy efficiency,” Field said in the release. “Solving the second requires deploying new sources of non-emitting energy like wind, solar, and nuclear power.”
Carnegie president Richard A. Meserve added:
“This study is a signal that global action is urgently needed to reverse the adverse trends or the challenge of responding to climate change will be more difficult.”