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Earth

Carbon Emissions Continued Increasing Last Year, Especially in China and India - But Not the US (apnews.com) 56

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: Even as Earth sets new heat records, humanity this year is pumping 330 million tons (300 million metric tons) more carbon dioxide into the air by burning fossil fuels than it did last year. This year the world is on track to put 41.2 billion tons (37.4 billion metric tons) of the main heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere. It's a 0.8% increase from 2023, according to Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who track emissions... This year's pollution increase isn't quite as large as last year's 1.4% jump, scientists said while presenting the data at the United Nations climate talks in Azerbaijan...

The continued rise in carbon emissions is mostly from the developing world and China. Many analysts had been hoping that China — by far the world's biggest annual carbon polluting nation with 32% of the emissions — would have peaked its carbon dioxide emissions by now. Instead China's emissions rose 0.2% from 2023, with coal pollution up 0.3%, Global Carbon Project calculated... [Although its growth rate now is "basically flat," O'Sullivan said.] That's nothing close to the increase in India, which at 8% of the globe's carbon pollution is third-largest carbon emitter. India's carbon pollution jumped 4.6% in 2024, the scientists said.

Carbon emissions fell 0.6% in the U.S. mostly from reduced coal, oil and cement use. The U.S. was responsible for 13% of the globe's carbon dioxide in 2024. Historically, it's responsible for 21% of the world's emissions since 1950... Twenty-two nations have shown steady decreases in emissions, O'Sullivan said, singling out the United States as one of those. The biggest emission drops from 2014 to 2023 were in the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. Europe, which accounts for 7% of the world's carbon pollution, saw its carbon dioxide output drop 3.8% from last year — driven by a big cut in coal emissions.

Some interesting statistics from the article:
  • Burning coal, oil, and natural gas is currently emitting 2.6 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of carbon dioxide every second..."
  • In the last 10 years, emissions have gone up about 6%.
  • Global carbon emissions are more than double what they were 50 years ago, and 50% more than they were in 1999.

"If the world continues burning fossil fuels at today's level, it has six years before passing 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the limit agreed to at the 2015 climate talks in Paris, said study co-author Stephen Sitch. The Earth is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit), according to the United Nations."

Yet "Total carbon emissions — which include fossil fuel pollution and land use changes such as deforestation — are basically flat because land emissions are declining, the scientists said."


Carbon Emissions Continued Increasing Last Year, Especially in China and India - But Not the US

Comments Filter:
  • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Sunday November 17, 2024 @03:53AM (#64951325) Homepage

    ...stop buying endless throwaway crap from China then their emissions won't go down. A lot of China's emissions are outsourced from the wests former industrial capacity. People need to take a good look in the mirror at their own lifestyles if climate change is really going to be combated, otherwise its all just virtue signalling.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Senshi ( 10461927 )
      Let not kidding ourselves. It’s too late. Domino effect is already in the momentum. World population is explosive and most don’t believe in science or even care as long they follow their money and religions. Optimism is a way of telling you to keep it up with consuming, breeding, making money, and praying.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      did you not even read the summary?
      China was very close to coming down. Even with morons still claiming it "rising faster than ever reeeeeee"
      It doesn't look like America will come down fast enough to ever be lower than China's CO2. [ourworldindata.org]
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Even if we did that, China is not going to stop the transition from agrarian to urban for hundreds of millions of people.

      That's really what this is down to. Building, short term solutions to local energy issues. With the amount of renewables going in, it's only a matter of time.

    • ...stop buying endless throwaway crap from China then their emissions won't go down. A lot of China's emissions are outsourced from the wests former industrial capacity. People need to take a good look in the mirror at their own lifestyles if climate change is really going to be combated, otherwise its all just virtue signalling.

      The people buying endless throwaway crap, are also the same ones enjoying endless stock market returns.

      Nothing like egging on a situation when you’re the crap-hoarding consumer and the investor.

    • People need to take a good look in the mirror at their own lifestyles

      Before we change our lifestyle we can simply do a lot to reduce senseless waste. Lifestyle implies that living would get tougher. Not that we do stupid things like throw repairable things away, leave the AC on all day when no one is home, buy V8s instead of sensible cars, etc.

      Now those people who need a lifestyle change are bitcoin miners. A good change for them would be to wake up in hospital with their knees broken.

      • See that's the problem.
        You cannot say that when most of the country's living paycheck to paycheck. The throwaway stuff is how many survive, and we met this issue times and times again when we wanted to get rid of plastic. It simply makes things to expensive when "get shit cheap" is entirely baked into the system.

    • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

      Well, yes, but the throwaway crap would still be eye-poppingly cheap if China adhered to some eco rules.

      So let's not act as if this wasn't a question of an inferior culture taking their profits from everybody's future including their own offspring.

      I am done with acting like every culture was equal in quality.

  • Blame the US somehow. Even if the numbers don't really back the argument.

    • The US is still China's biggest customer.

      We are not responsible for all of the ill in the world, but we do have an outsized share

  • Like MethaneSAT but for Carbon emissions? https://www.methanesat.org/ [methanesat.org]

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