Since 2002, the base year for the Bush Administration’s emissions intensity reduction goal of 18 percent in a decade, U.S. greenhouse gas intensity has fallen by an average of 2.5 percent per year, resulting in a total reduction of almost 10 percent from 2002 to 2006.
Yes, I've seen that before. It's one of the stats that deniers keep trotting out. It just shows that either they don't understand the problem, don't understand what "energy intensity" is, or are deliberately obfuscating. GHG intensity refers to the amount of energy used to produce x. No one says that reducing intensity isn't important, or hasn't occurred. What people say is that despite the decrease in intensity, emissions have gone up, due in part to increased population and in part to new uses and/or new production processes.
China's carbon dioxide emissions may exceed those of the United States in 2007, making the country the world's largest greenhouse gas polluter, according to analysis of Chinese energy data.
I seem to recall reading that China has surpassed the US in total emissions a few months ago.
China's emissions growth is one of the big reasons why the United States and Australia have refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol which calls for emissions limits for industrialized countries but none for developing economies including China, India, and Brazil.
Aside from the fact that Australia did sign Kyoto a few months ago, the fact that developing economies were exempted from Kyoto is a canard. First, developing countries have produced far and away the greatest amount of emissions over the past couple of hundred years, and so bear a greater responsibility for reductions. Second, Kyoto was never conceived of as a "final" word or solution--it was a stopgap measure, a beginning, not an end. Third, one important reason for the reduction of intensity alluded to above is that both the US and Europe have exported much of the dirtiest manufacturing to China and other developing countries. We import the final product or, sometimes, the parts which are assembled here and in Europe. Yes, we've "benefitted" economically from this. But we are also importing the emissions through the climate and, eventually, the consequences of the emissions. Of course, we don't import the main thrust of the pollution that the manufacturing causes in both air and water--the blessings of those things fall on the manufacturing countries. We just pay for it with our stored wealth and with debt. At some point, even the stored wealth will be squandered and our creditors will refuse to finance the debt.
However, emissions per unit of GDP is far less in the U.S. Just another benefit of a highly-industrialized, technically advanced economy. We have both the technology and the resources to reduce. And, apparently, the will also as witness to recent progress.
Yes, emissions per unit of GDP is less here--some of the above comments respond to that. No one doubts that we have "the technology and the resources to reduce" emissions. The problem is reducing energy intensity isn't good enough. The atmosphere doesn't respond to that--it only responds to the total amount of CO2 and other GHGs that are there. I just posted an article (the article is here: climateprogress.org. ) which says that we can even reduce total emissions, not just energy intensity, without all that much cost:
To balance the bad news, the IPCC and its member governments agree on the good news — action is very affordable:
In 2050, global average macro-economic costs for mitigation towards stabilisation between 710 and 445ppm CO2-eq are between a 1% gain and 5.5% decrease of global GDP. This corresponds to slowing average annual global GDP growth by less than 0.12 percentage points.
These "arguments" remind of the declarations back in the 80s that AIDs was God's punishment for gay sex in the sense that the people making the arguments somehow convinced themselves that a virus was quid pro quo for "immoral" behavior, lol. Science and physical reality doesn't work like that. |
