Can you guess what only benefit the world gained in the recent economic recession? It is hard to guess. The answer is “Cuts in carbon pollution”. It is measured that Carbon dioxide pollution cut down in the last year and first time in this decade.
But the sad news is, it didn’t last long and the drop is not as much as we expected.
We know two main reasons of Carbon pollutions are, Airplanes and vehicles generate green house gases and burning fossil to fuel power factories. The green house gases are warming the world. But in that recession period many factories were shut down and also people didn’t fly or drive as much they did earlier. This is the reason for dropping the emission rate about 1.3% comparing to year 2008-2009.
(This statistics published in Sunday in the Journal Nature Geoscience.Study lead author Pierre Friedlingstein (University of Exeter in England) said there is a close link between pollution and gross domestic product in recent decades. The only good part of the recession period is that it reduced emissions.
The Energy Department of United States said the emission dropped 7% in U.S. in 2009 and the three main reasons behind it are slightly better energy efficiency, the slowing economy and cleaner energy.
In 2009 the whole world produced 34 billion tons (nearly 31 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide. Comparing to 2008 it has dropped 453 million tons – and this amount is equal to U.S.
emits in about 26 days.The last time the world witnessed the carbon dioxide pollution dropped world wide was in 1999. According to Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Lab report it was the biggest drop since 1992. Despite the last years improvement in “carbon dioxide pollution” the overall carbon emission increased 25% comparing to 2000 which is not at all impressive.
With the recovery process from the recession period the Carbon pollution is began to rise this year and the experts fearing that it will set a record in 2010.
Friedlingstein said, he forecasting of the last year said that the carbon dioxide pollution will drop 3% from 2009. That forecast was based on GDP projections from the IMF. But the recovery process performed more than expected and as a consequence the developing country produced more carbon dioxide that expected.
Developing countries don’t use energy as efficiently as the developed countries do and these developing countries were less affected by the recession capering to developed countries.
According to study in this recovery period Chinna increased 8% of carbon pollution from 2008-2009. India’s increased rate is 6%.
In 1990’s developed countries produced 65% of carbon dioxide said by the study co-author Gregg Marland of the Oak Ridge National Lab. Now this percentage is less than 43% because those developed countries cut 10 % of emission while the developing countries almost double their overall emission.
Friedlingstein said, one good news is that the carbon dioxide emission from the destruction of forest is decreasing considerably.
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist of University of Victoria said it seems that our planate will fail to reach the goal set by the international negotiations in Copenhagen last year “Limiting the global warming to a 3.6 degree (2 degree Celsius) temperature increase since industrialization.
According to the National Climatic Data Center it is revealed from the last 10 months study that 2010 is tied for the hottest year in 131 years.
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