What country is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?
Question by *~M’n'M~*: What country is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?
we watched the inconvenient truth today in geography and i didn’t get all the questions down
pleease help, ty <3
Best answer:
Answer by Rohn
China and USA
Rohn
What do you think? Answer below!
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- what country is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (1)
no USA is on no.14
china is on no. 121
check this link they have data till 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita
Well, first of all, there are different scales used, such as per capital, land use, and absolute volume. Each scale has a different list of countries. First link below is carbon dioxide per capita emissions as of 2007. Second link below is greenhouse gasses as a hole as of 2000. The final link is probably the one used to determine “the worst” contributor; the list of countries by carbon dioxide emissions as an absolute values as of 2007.
China (People’s Republic of China) is the worst, followed by the United States. The European Union is listed at third, but because of some unique situations, it doesn’t actually score, which makes Russia third. India is number four, and Japan comes in at the bottom of the top five.
Now, there are some political and economic problems in this list. Problems that are preventing us from seriously pursuing green/sustainable/renewable energy, and any kind of cleaning of the atmosphere, were it possible. Read the fourth link.
The problem lies with the Kyoto Protocols, which is a sub-unit of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is aimed at combating the issue of global warming. UNFCCC is an International Environmental Treaty. The Protocol went into effect on Feb. 16, 2005. As of November, 2009, 187 countries have signed the Protocol. The United States, however, as not. China is in a process of runaway greenhouse emissions – up 120% from the year 2000, passing the US in 2007, and only getting worse. India is doing essentially the same thing, and will catch up soon.
So here is the problem. It’s expensive to cut emissions. You need to scrub the air that is coming from existing plants. You need to research, develop, and implement green energy sources (wind, solar, geothermal….). That’s expensive. It’s almost free once it’s in place, but it’s expensive to build in the first place. Now – China and India have sort of squeaked their way out of their obligations, even though they have signed the Protocol, by stating that as “developing countries,” they are essentially free of the rules, so that their countries can rapidly develop. This is cheap. So the United States hasn’t signed the Protocols, because it would be competing as a large country against two other large countries who won’t be constrained by political rules and weight of economic responsibility.
It is currently unknown what will happen with those three countries in the near future, as all three of them jockey for best position of political and economic power.
Not to be a cynic or anything, but most everything that goes on the in the world, good or bad, comes down to economics.