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Peter Tsambounieris
Professor Mason
Final
Question 2 Climate Change:
Who would’ve thought that one day the very fuels that helped the U.S. start an
industrial revolution and grow into the world’s largest superpower would devastate our planet?
By 2011, the largest CO2 abuser of our atmosphere was China with twenty seven percent of the
world’s carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption of energy or about 8,715.31 million
metric tons of emissions.1 They overtook the U.S as the largest CO2 polluter in 2005.2 Don’t
worry, the U.S. is close behind with 5,490.63 million metric tons and 17.62% of the world’s
share.3 To put it in perspective per capita, that’s about 17.62 tons per of deadly Co2 emissions
per American per year. Also there is Russia and India in with a li4le less than half of our
emissions each. Then there is the EU which has approximately 10% of the global emissions. It is
remarkable how much a single country can pollute when you look at these figure. By 2050, we
can expect to see China and India as the largest CO2 emi4ers approximately tied with about
35% of the world’s reduced carbon dioxide emission rate. This makes plausible sense these will
be the two largest countries by far with approximately 1.3 billion people for China and 1.7
billion for India. With an extra 2.2 billion people on the planet it is no wonder why we’re trying
to get to the root of the fossil fuel problem now and 6nd effective solutions to ensure the
sustainable growth and development of our civilization.
1 3 h4p://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-
co2.html#.VnDgH@rLWI
2 h4p://www.wri.org/blog/2014/05/history-carbon-dioxide-emissions
3
The culprit that is most to blame for our high level of global emissions is coal because it
is made of 70% carbon. Coal is also the most relied upon resource in the energy sector which
supplies our planet with a third of our electricity and electricity accounts for approximately 37%
of all carbon dioxide pollution.4 These numbers are staggering to think about. If we don’t stop
using coal which is one of the most abundant resources on the planet and one of the most
relied upon by humans from developing countries. If we don’t cut out this reliance on this
deadly fuel then I will have many nightmares at night about our not so distant future.
Due to these grotesque figure, we have surpassed the 400 parts per million mark per
year which most scientists have concluded as a symbol for catastrophic events. The famous
