MikeMacCracken’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Matching Kyoto

  Dear Umbra--Were doing your share to meet Kyoto so easy. First, while the Annex I countries like the US are on average supposed to cut their emissions by 5%, the US commitment is for 7% cuback of 1990 emissions by 2010 (Europe is, I believe 8%; some other countries are less or evan, like Australia, get to increase their emissions). Second, and what makes things really difficult, is that this is a limit for the country, not an individual. Since the US population is growing at roughly 1% per year (and I don't know if this is the growth in the legal population, or also includes visitors and illegal immigrants), this means over a 20% increase from 1990 to 2010, and so what we all have to do, in reality, is to cut our carbon-based emissions by 30% (or a bit more) so that as a country we end up with emissions 7% lower by 2010. By contrast, the population of Europe is level or declining, so they have to cut, on a per capita basis a bit less than 8% (and plans are for some countries to do a good bit more and others to even increase their emissions to head toward more even emissions per capita). So, while the Europeans can spend money replacing their least efficient facilities, the US has to keep old and new facilities open to supply energy to the growing population. Rates of technological improvement are roughly 1%/year, so this helps, and should make things pretty easy for Europe, but even with this rate, those in the US have to make pretty significant reductions, and over a pretty short time. Had the US effort started earlier, had we been allowed to sequester carbon, had we the money and permission and will to buy permits from others, etc., it all might have been easier. This is not at all to say we should not try harder than we are--only that the task is a good bit more challenging than for the Europeans--and than your analysis indicated.On Umbra on reducing emissions, one person at a time posted 4 years, 5 months ago 3 Responses