Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Who's who in the carbon zoo?

Every year, BP produces a "Statistical Review of World Energy".  It is a wonderful resource, not least because it comes complete with a database which allows you to draw your own graphs (and your own conclusions).

This year's edition has just been published.  It includes a listing of the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels over the past 57 years:
Zowie! We have been told the world is heading for disaster; that we will fry if we don't mend our ways; that eternal damnation awaits us if we continue to burn fossil fuels.  Yet what does this show?  The "Evil US" has actually cut back its emissions, without any guff about signing the Kyoto Protocol.  Europe cut back at the beginning of the nineties - nothing to do with Kyoto, and everything to do with the arrival of North Sea gas. And Asia/Pacific is going absolutely bananas, now nearly half the total fossil-fuel-derived emissions.

The thin brown stripe is the whole of Africa.  For those of us in South Africa who think we can save the world by cutting our emissions, building windmills and huge solar plants, please think again.  In the scheme of things, we are truly insignificant.