Australia is the worst carbon emitter

Australia is the worst carbon emitter

news.bbc.co.uk

Australians were found to be the world's worst polluters per capita, producing five times as much carbon from generating power as China.
The US came second with eight tonnes of carbon per head - 16 times more than that produced by India.

The US also produced the most carbon in total, followed by China.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.abc.net.au
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
www.telegraph.co.uk

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Interesting questions - global warming/carbon tax


[edit on 15/11/2007 by watch_the_rocks]

With the Beijing Olympics highlighting China's problems and causing the world to point the finger at that Asian nation, the countries emitting much more carbon per head are slipping under the radar.
As a first-world country with many green initiatives, Australia should be setting an example for the rest of the world, rather than providing one of what not to do.

Admittedly, China is spewing out a huge amount of emissions, many times more than what Australia is out-putting, but given that we have 1.6% of China's population and are not currently building up an economy or any great industry or laying cross-country roads or installing dozens of thousand-mile train tracks, there should most surely be no need for all of this power.

Per capita may not be the best way to view this data, given the massive populations of China and India, but it sure shows that two of the worlds foremost nations, Australia and the U.S., aren't knights in shining armour after all.

It's actually quite sooty. (sorry)

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 15/11/2007 by watch_the_rocks]

So pretty much what its saying is get more efficient coal fired power stations, or get nuclear powerstations. Or get clean coal.

Actually i think we are currently doing all three. If howard gets reelected, we are going to go nuclear. We also are designing clean coal technology and clean coal fired powerstations that reduce emmisions by like 80%, and also there is a powerstation design that traps ALL the carbon emissions making 0% carbon emissions and will store them underground.

We are building and designing this sort of technology to give it to countries like China and India, so they also can reduce thier carbon emmisions and create a healthier, cleaner atmosphere.

As for Nuclear powerstations, we are designning i believe with the US Next Gen Nuclear Power Stations, that will also be used over here in australia.

[edit on 15-11-2007 by DaRAGE]

That's exactly what I was thinking, that Howard is planning to introduce new, more efficient forms of energy production if he gets re-elected. I'm pretty sure Rudd hasn't mentioned anything about any of that, which might trip him up.

I'm all for nuclear power. I don't see anything wrong with it, and I don't mind if they build a reactor at the planned spot a few kilometres from here. People seem to have this belief that nuclear power is unsafe compared to, well, everything else that exists.

Yup, sad but yet true...We really are the worst....

One answer would be to gradually switch to gas fired power stations rather than coal....In the meantime, of course we need to develop technologies that allow CO2 to be stored underground...

But in my mind, in the medium term, gas powered electricity is the way to go...

Sure nuclear makes sense in a lot of ways as maybe 15-20 % of our power needs, but people are very wary of nuclear, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon...

I agree with you 100% WTR, Australia should indeed start setting an example to our neighbours when it comes to implementing technology to reduce our carbon output...

No doubt the attitude amongst many of our neighbours in Asia would be, "well if they won't do it, why should we ? they've been developing for over a century unchecked...Why should we suffer whilst we've only just started to develop ?"

To my mind, that is a most reasonable argument and its up to countries like Australia and other developed countries who emit a lot of carbon that are yet to "come to the table" to do so, in order to get those developing nations that emit large amounts of carbon to also come to the table to gradually reduce their outputs...

IMO, leadership on this issue sits solely and squarely with countries like Australia when it comes to non action to date...

Time is almost up

Nice OP WTR