Be it China, United States, Russia, India or Indonesia, all of them have one thing in common; increasing carbon dioxide emissions. The world has surpassed the estimated worst case scenario by 3%, and at this rate is on track to drown or burn.
According to the Global Carbon Project, China was the most abundant polluter, followed by United States; while other developed countries cut back on their carbon, they blew more. Developing countries like India and China, who were not to reduce greenhouse gases in accordance with the 1997 Kyoto treaty, currently account for maximum carbon dioxide pollution at 53%. The Kyoto Treaty is a protocol to the international United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change aimed at reducing greenhouse gases to prevent man made climate change. Countries are said to have ratified the protocol if they agree to the framework.
Up until this year, about 39 developed countries have ratified Kyoto and are required to reduce their emissions, whereas 137 developing countries have ratified it, but only have to monitor and report emissions. Australia was the latest addition to this list and United States is the only country that hasn’t agreed to Kyoto yet. In 2006, China was the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter; the United States couldn’t lag far behind and ended up with a 2% increase in 2007.
It was thought that the emissions would drop owing to economic derailing, but that wasn’t the case. The only countries wherein emission rates dropped were Denmark by 8%, UK and Germany by 3 %, France and Australia by 2%. As the trend goes, hogging is not new to humans, so it’s probably understood that before we hit the year 2020, we can keep ourselves busy with setting the targets, but not meeting them, and anyways after that we will be busy predicting the doomsday.
Source: msnbc