Well almost. I’m still shocked, amazed, amused, whatever, over the lack of critical thinking by highly placed influential people. I’m currently working in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the heart of the north american continent (almost literally, actually the dead centre of the continent is somewhere near Grand Forks, ND, about 120Km south of here.) Yesterday in celebration of Earth Day, the provincial government anounced its plans to meet its Kyoto committments, a lofty goal. I applaud their efforts. In their announcement, however, they said that Europe was meeting its targets under Kyoto. Got me to thinking…
I’ve looked at the numbers previously and that didn’t sound right. So I went back to the well, or the internet at least, to see what the current state looks like. Interestingly, I couldn’t find numbers past 2004, but the trend is still interesting. I got the numbers from Mongabay.com, they have a page called Carbon Dioxide Emissions Charts, 2005 where they have lots of charts showing a great number of things. If you drill down to the raw data, derived from National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions data at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
I downloaded the raw numbers from the Oak Ridge site and plotted them. The graph for the EU15 is interesting and shown below.
Blue = raw, Black = linear trend.
The numbers for 2004 show the EU15 to be 4.8% above the 1990 target and hence above the Kyoto target of 5.2% below 1990. We could say that the target has to be met by 2012 and they still have a few years to get there, but if the numbers were going up in 2004, it doesn’t look good.
Indeed, an article at EurActiv provides the following insight;
European CO2 emissions up in 2007
Published: Thursday 3 April 2008
Early analyses reveal a slight increase in EU industrial CO2 emissions in 2007, casting doubts as to the bloc’s ability to honour its CO2 reduction commitments on time. However, analysts predict emissions will drop in coming years as the Commission begins to tighten the EU’s carbon belt.
EU industrial installations publicised data on their CO2 emissions in 2007. The figures, which may be subject to adjustment by national authorities, indicate a 1.1% overall increase, according to an initial analysis by the carbon market consultancy Point Carbon.
Member states like Germany saw a 2% rise in emissions, and the UK emitted 85 million tonnes more CO2 than it was allocated.
We shall see.
Note: If anyone knows where a country by country listing of CO2 emissions up to 2007 can be found, please let me know.
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