Washington, DC — “Global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels stood at a record 8.38 gigatons of carbon in 2006, 20 percent above the level in 2000”�, writes Frances C. Moore in a recent Earth Policy Institute release, “Carbon Dioxide Emissions Accelerating Rapidly”�. “Emissions grew 3.1 percent a year between 2000 and 2006, more than twice the rate of growth during the 1990s. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been growing steadily for 200 years, but the growth in emissions is now accelerating despite unambiguous evidence that carbon dioxide is warming the planet and disrupting ecosystems around the globe.”�

In 2000, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) laid out projections of how greenhouse gas emissions were likely to evolve during the twenty-first century. The high-end scenario combined rapid economic growth and globalization with intensive fossil fuel use and is used as the IPCC’s upper limit for estimates of future climate change. Yet this upper-limit projection predicted annual emissions growth of only 2.3 percent between 2000 and 2010—far less than the 3.1 percent annual increase observed so far this century. With CO2 emissions currently exceeding the worst-case scenario, we can expect that temperature and sea level rise will likely do the same.

Five countries are responsible for over half of fossil-fuel-related CO2 emissions. The U.S. has been the world’s largest emitter for over a century, releasing 1.66 gigatons of carbon (GtC) in 2006, or 19.8 percent of global emissions. It is now closely followed by China, where emissions have more than doubled since 1990, reaching 1.48 GtC in 2006, or 17.7 percent of the world total. Analysts expect that China will overtake the U.S. to become the world’s largest emitter before 2009. The other countries in the top five are Russia, India, and Japan, respectively accounting for 5.2, 4.7, and 4.1 percent of global CO2 emissions. (See data.)

These national and regional numbers mask huge differences in per-capita CO2 emissions. Americans have some of the largest per-capita emissions in the world. At 5.5 tons of carbon, per person U.S. emissions are almost five times greater than those in China, and almost 200 times greater than those in the poorest countries in the world. The U.N. calculates that an air-conditioner in Florida is responsible for more CO2 every year than a person in Cambodia is in a lifetime.

Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning is accumulating in the atmosphere. Ice core records indicate that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than at any point in the last 650,000 years, reaching 384 parts per million (ppm) in 2007. Between 2000 and 2007, atmospheric CO2 concentration grew by an average of 2 ppm per year, the fastest seven-year increase since continuous monitoring began in 1959.

Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, in combination with other greenhouse gases, have raised global average temperature by 0.8 degrees Celsius, with more than two thirds of that increase coming since 1980. This warming is already affecting natural systems around the world: scientists have documented trends of more heat waves, longer and more-intense droughts, higher sea level, more-frequent heavy rain events, and stronger hurricanes.

The IPCC projects that under business-as-usual, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning could more than double between 2000 and 2030, making it almost impossible to avoid a temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. Increasing evidence shows that even a warming of less than 2 degrees would constitute dangerous climate change, suggesting the world must move rapidly to reverse the long trend of growing CO2 emissions. For full report, see http://www.earthpolicy.org/Indicators/CO2/2008.htm

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