Commitment to meet carbon cutting pledges
An [article from Environment and Energy Publishing](http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059989968) remarked that the US was not meeting its climate cutting goals:
> five governments -- Australia, China, the European Union, India and Russia -- are on track to meet their carbon-cutting pledges. The United States ... is among four nations that will require "further action" or the purchase of carbon offsets in order to meet its emissions goals.
The article is based on a United Nations Emissions Gap Report. The home page for the report is [here] [gapreportpage], You can [download a PDF here] [gapreportpdf]. For those on limited reading diets, there's an [executive summary] [execsummary]. Also good if you are an executive and want a sumamry, iI suppose. Backup data is found in [the appendices] [appendices]
The report points out that the United States has no binding governmental commitment to reduce its carbon emissions, and argues that it can't be counted upon to meet the target set for it. That's true, but it's also misleading. First, because a governmental commitment does not mean that the government in question will actually meet it. And second, and more important, because the commitments of different nations are quite different.
The US target, for example, is the same as Canada's: reduce emissions by 17%.
The China target is NOT to reduce emissions. rather it is to reduce emissions per Unit of GDP. The difference is large, and important.
Both the US and China plan to grow their economies, but the US plans to reduce emissions while growing its economy. But China produces a much larger amount of greenhouse gas per unit of GDP and China intends to grow its GDP faster than the US. The result is that its plan to reduce emissions/GDP will not reduce emisisons. Indeed it is expected to increase emissions. So will India's plan.
The US currently produces about 13% of total emissions. China already produces 22%, and is on track to grow this by a lot.
Here's what the numbers show--just picking the US and China:
Between 2005 and 2010 the US emissions dropped from more than 7000 MtCO2 (Million tons of CO2) to about 6800 MitCO2 During that same time, China went up from 7000 (already more than the US) to 10,000 (nearly 1.5 times as much).
If the US were to meets its plan, it will emit about 6000 mt in 2020, or another 7% reduction. If the US does NOT meet its commitments, but hits the "business as usual" number, it is believed that it will grow about 7% above the 2010 number.
If China meets its commitments it will produce 14000 mtCO2. That is 40% MORE than 2010.
The per-capita emissions in the US are higher than every country but Australia, but the per-unit of GDP emissions for China are currently more than double the per-unit emissions of the US and even under the plan will still be above the US numbers.
So no matter what the US does, if China follows its "plan" greenhouse gas emissions will be well above this group's targets.
The stark reality is that if the US were to halve its emissions, China's increase would more than match it. And that's without considering India.
And Africa? Most countries in Africa don't even have a goal. That's not a problem now because their economies and emissions are small. But as they grow? Watch out world.
[gapreportpage]: http://www.unep.org/
[gapreportpdf]: http://www.unep.org/pdf/
[execsummary]: http://www.unep.org/
[appendices] http://www.unep.org/
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