Global emissions grew faster than ever in 2010: study
Global carbon emissions, seen as the driver for climate change, grew at the fastest rate in recorded history in 2010, according to a study published Monday.
Examining volumes of data, they found that world-wide emissions grew more in 2010 than any year prior to the onset of the industrial revolution, jumping 5.9 percent as the global economy revved back up after a three-year slump. Overall, human activity was responsible for releasing 9.14 billion tons of carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2010, whereas in 2009 global emissions dropped 1.4 percent due to declining economic activity.
The leading cause of emission growth, scientists found, was an increasing reliance on coal for electricity generation.
The report was published as delegates from all over the world entered a crucial phase of negotiating a global treaty on emissions, which seemed less likely to pass as talks entered their second week.
The key stumbling blocks to an agreement thus far have been China and the U.S., the world’s two greatest polluters.
Chinese delegates have said they are open to a treaty that initiates legally binding emissions standards, but in back-room talks they have resisted any hard future standards for emission limits. The U.S., similarly, has resisted capping emissions unless all other nations are treated equally under the potential treaty’s legal framework.
The United States is the second worst offender when it comes to greenhouse emissions, with China being the first. The U.S., however, has a much higher emissions-per-capita rate: a painful fact that led a key Chinese official to recently declare that if Chinese emissions were to grow as high per person as the U.S., it would be a “disaster for the world.”
Despite near unanimous scientific consensus on the reality of human-driven climate change, Americans remain divided on the issue. A Gallup poll found in November that just 53 percent of Americans see climate change as a very or somewhat serious threat, down 10 percent from two years earlier.
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