Elizabeth May - Climate Change For Dummies

Historically, the stronger a country’s economy, the more GHGs it produces. The general rule has been that a strengthening economy means a greater consumption of fossil fuels — just look at the rapid growth of the auto industry in China, which promises to surpass the United States in production and sales. Some countries have broken that link. Sweden was the first to prove that it was possible to grow GDP while reducing the reliance on fossil fuels, but others have followed suit.

But even as the economies of developing countries grow, they still emit only a small portion of what people in industrialized countries do, per capita. They have a lot of catching up to do. When we wrote the first draft of this chapter in 2007, the world’s biggest GHG polluter as a whole country was the United States. But, since then, China’s emissions of GHGs have already surpassed the United States’. The total pollution from developing countries is expected to exceed the pollution from the industrialized world by 2030. (We take a look at developing nations in Chapter 12.)

A low-carbon future is essential. The IPCC says countries need to move quickly to clean energy or else the course of the climate emergency will become irreversible. It recommends that governments establish effective policies that support clean energies and wean the world off oil rapidly, cutting emissions by at least half by 2030. We talk more about government solutions in Chapter 10and explore energy alternatives in Chapter 13.

Some countries show that economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions aren’t necessarily intertwined. By 2009, Sweden had seen 44-percent economic growth while reducing its GHG emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels. Sweden is on track to be carbon-neutral by 2045.

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