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Title: Carbon Emissions Continued Increasing Last Year, Especially in China
and India - But Not the US

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/17/0044...

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: Even as
Earth sets new heat records, humanity this year is pumping 330 million tons
(300 million metric tons) more carbon dioxide into the air by burning fossil
fuels than it did last year. This year the world is on track to put 41.2
billion tons (37.4 billion metric tons) of the main heat-trapping gas into
the atmosphere. It's a 0.8% increase from 2023, according to Global Carbon
Project, a group of scientists who track emissions... This year's pollution
increase isn't quite as large as last year's 1.4% jump, scientists said while
presenting the data at the United Nations climate talks in Azerbaijan... The
continued rise in carbon emissions is mostly from the developing world and
China. Many analysts had been hoping that China - by far the world's biggest
annual carbon polluting nation with 32% of the emissions - would have peaked
its carbon dioxide emissions by now. Instead China's emissions rose 0.2% from
2023, with coal pollution up 0.3%, Global Carbon Project calculated...
[Although its growth rate now is "basically flat," O'Sullivan said.] That's
nothing close to the increase in India, which at 8% of the globe's carbon
pollution is third-largest carbon emitter. India's carbon pollution jumped
4.6% in 2024, the scientists said. Carbon emissions fell 0.6% in the U.S.
mostly from reduced coal, oil and cement use. The U.S. was responsible for
13% of the globe's carbon dioxide in 2024. Historically, it's responsible for
21% of the world's emissions since 1950... Twenty-two nations have shown
steady decreases in emissions, O'Sullivan said, singling out the United
States as one of those. The biggest emission drops from 2014 to 2023 were in
the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. Europe,
which accounts for 7% of the world's carbon pollution, saw its carbon dioxide
output drop 3.8% from last year - driven by a big cut in coal emissions. Some
interesting statistics from the article: Burning coal, oil, and natural gas
is currently emitting 2.6 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of carbon
dioxide every second..." In the last 10 years, emissions have gone up about
6%. Global carbon emissions are more than double what they were 50 years ago,
and 50% more than they were in 1999. "If the world continues burning fossil
fuels at today's level, it has six years before passing 1.5 degrees Celsius
(2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the limit agreed to at the 2015
climate talks in Paris, said study co-author Stephen Sitch. The Earth is
already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit), according to the United
Nations." Yet "Total carbon emissions - which include fossil fuel pollution
and land use changes such as deforestation - are basically flat because land
emissions are declining, the scientists said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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