The focus for the motoring industry may be on green cars cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions but it seems our reliance on fossil fuels is only increasing.
Annual emissions have grown 37.8 per cent since 1992 from 6.1 billions tons of carbon to 8.5 billion tons in 2007, according to data from the US Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre. Admittedly global emissions in 1992 were at their lowest levels since the 1990 baseline year, but this still, on the surface, represents a steep rise at what is seemingly just the beginning of a worldwide drive to turn green.
However, the source of emissions has shifted steeply as energy use has been growing slowly in developed countries but much more quickly in developing countries.
For example, the United States was the largest emitter of CO2 in 1992 followed by China, Russia, Japan and India respectively. In 2002 however, India surpassed Japan. In 2006, China surpassed the USA into pole position. And now India is poised to pass Russia and become the third largest emitter in the world.
Admittedly these numbers are subject to debate and there is room for error.
There is also some debate about how these emissions are distributed. For example, it is estimated that a third of CO2 emissions from China in 2005 actually came from production of goods for export.
Latest estimates show that annual emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere are continuing to grow though there have been improvements in some countries. The 38 developed countries that agreed to the Kyoto Protocol were responsible for around 62 per cent of emissions prior to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. However, by the time the protocol was drafted in 1997 that fraction was cut to 57 per cent.
