DeepFreez

Lets look at some stats.  The top five most populous countries in the world are

1. China (20.28%)
2. India (16.81%)
3. United States of America (4.58%)
4. Indonesia (3.56%)
5. Brazil (2.86%)

Wikipedia

Ok, so there are lots of Chinese and Indian people in the world.

The next stat that people would have you look at is emissions per capita.  The top ten in metric tons per person (mtpp)

1. Qatar (36.52)
2. Kuwait (25.33)
3. United Arab Emirates (23.62)
4. Bahrain (21.8)
5. Luxembourg (21.6)
6. United States (19.92)
7. Australia (17.29)
8. Trinidad and Tobago (16.93)
9. Canada (16.54)
10. Brunei Darussalam (15.2)

EarthTrends

Interesting to note that neither China (2.93mtpp) nor India (1.05mtpp) feature in the top ten list.  Its easy to draw two very wrong conclusions from the two lists above.

From the first list one might be tempted to conclude that China and India are the culprits, because they have the most people.  From the second list one might be tempted to conclude that Qatar is a very dirty place and that they are to blame.

But wait, lets look at those two conclusions.  Let us list the top five (plus China and India) CO2 producing countries and multiply their mtpp by their populations ordered from largest to smallest in million tons(Mt)

1. United States (5975Mt)
2. China (3853Mt)
3. India (1155Mt)
4. Canada (540Mt)
5. Australia (358Mt)

What pops out is that the single biggest producer of CO2 emissions is the United states.  They produce 1.6 times as much as China and 5 times as much as India.  In fact, they produce more than China and India combined!

If they reduce their emissions per person to 13mtpp they would end up equaling China.  This can not be so hard to do, considering that pretty much all European countries keep it between 13mtpp and 8mtpp or less.

So now we know who is killing my planet.  I don't want my planet killed because I kind of like to live here.  So what to do?  Lets look at the formulae and decide which factors need adjusting.

Total Emission = Population x Emissions per person

There are two factors here.  Reducing either one will bring the total emissions down.  Reducing emissions per person in the USA to 13mtpp would reduce the total emissions produced by 2076Mt (more than India produces in total).  Achieving this would require some political will to do so.  Unfortunately the United States of America has repeatedly proven that they are not interested in doing this.  Either because they do not have moral fortitude to do so, or because it is not financially beneficial for them to do so.  Neither of these reasons really endears them to the rest of the inhabitants of this planet.

Reducing the population to 200,000,000 people would have the same effect (that's about 100 million people less).  The top ten largest cities in the USA have about 24 million people living in the city limits and about 67 million people in the metropolitan areas.Wikipedia

So here we are.  I am an inhabitant of this planet and most likely my descendants will be too.  In our enlightened age large parts of the world have come to the conclusion that I have some basic human rights.  Among them the right to life.  But there are circumstances under which these rights may be reduced for the greater good.  One such is when I am in mortal danger and I need to defend myself or the life of others.

So, Mr Bush.  Please reduce the CO2 emissions of your countrymen.  If you can't manage that, I am sure I can think of something else to save my life and the life of my children.

# posted by DeepFreez @ 10:44