Greenhouse gas: The more we talk of, the more it grows

Our beautiful planet Earth is threatened by looming dark clouds. The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the US Department of Energy has calculated, in a sign of how weak the world's efforts have been at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago. John Reilly of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) rightly opined - "the more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," The world pumped about 564 million more tonnes of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of six per cent - that amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries - China, the US and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases. Extra pollution in China and the US accounts for more than half the increase in emissions last year. India and China are huge users of coal [burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly eight per cent in 2010]. Though broader economic improvement in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people, yet doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world. As thing stands now - global emissions remain higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its last report elaborate on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution, and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. It is also a fact that in 1990, developed countries produced about 60 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases, now it is probably less than 50 per cent. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about eight per cent below 1990 levels. It is good to note that Australian parliament has passed landmark laws to impose a price on carbon emissions in one of the biggest economic reforms in a decade - the most comprehensive carbon price scheme outside of Europe - giving new impetus to December's global climate talks in South Africa. The scheme's impact will be felt right across the economy, from miners to liquefied natural gas (LNG) producers, airlines and steel makers and is aimed at making firms more energy - efficient and push power generation towards gas and the renewable. Incidentally, Australia accounts for just 1.5 per cent of global emissions, but is the developed world's highest emitter per capita due to a reliance on coal to generate electricity. No doubt, the scheme is a central plank in the government's fight against climate change and aims to halt the growth of the country's growing greenhouse gas emissions from a resources-led boom and age-old reliance on coal for power generation - setting a fixed carbon tax of A$23 ($23.78) a tonne on the top 500 polluters from July 2012, then moves to an emission trading scheme from July 2015. Companies involved will need a permit for every tonne of carbon they emit. Clearly, it marks the beginning of Australia's clean energy future. The writer Dr B K Mukhopadhyay teaches in Gauhati University, India. He can be reached at email: m.bibhas@gmail.com