This post focuses on India. To provide a brief road map, I’m concluding my world hopscotch tour with three more profiles after India’s: Bangladesh (focusing on climate justice), and then China and the United States, rounding out the world’s top three emitters, before making an overview of the planet as a whole. After that, for the remainder of the series, I’ll be looking at individual topics such as modeling, electric vehicles (EVs), and others.
Annual CO2 emissions, top three, 1950-2020.
This look ahead is partly to reframe this post and its illustrations as part of the conclusion to this glance around the world, which I hope you’ve enjoyed reading as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. My goal hasn’t been to provide Hard Science and Dissertation-Level Thinking in every post. I honestly don’t have time to pull that off every day! Some days a topic grips me, and I go for it. Other days, I take it a little easier (and you’ve probably been able to spot the difference here and there 😛 ).
Annual CO2 emissions, top three, 1950-2020.
But I have tried to give you a sense of the variety and the beauty of the world we live in, and of the color and variety of the different societies throughout it. These are the things we stand to lose if we fail to manage global warming (among the other growing threats we face in the United States and elsewhere). Seeing a picture of the horses of Azerbaijan, the cataracts of Siberia, the altiplano of Peru, the terraced gardens of Nigeria—I hope these images help renew in all of us a desire to preserve them. They and each other are all we have.
Per capita CO2 emissions, top three, 1950-2020.
The carbon emissions diagrams show not only India, but also the US and China, in that (reversed) order the top three carbon emitters on the planet. Their massive amounts of carbon dioxide output are best put into perspective against each other, and the world’s at large. India’s story of carbon emissions is simply told: a massive nation whose population has grown exponentially over the past seven decades has followed a strategy of maximal economic growth. All the details boil down to that. China’s modern story is the same, though their histories are not. India and China both have virtually the same percentage of the world’s population—17.8%--and while India’s greenhouse emissions are 7% of the world total, China’s are 31%.
Carbon intensity of electricity production, top 3 CO2 emitters, 1950-2020.
India has been somewhat dismissive of the 2015 Paris Agreement, setting very lax emissions targets. The Agreement’s aim is to keep global temperature rise by 2050 below 2ºC/3.6ºF at most, and 1.5ºC/2.7ºF if possible. To this end the Agreement specifies that member nations (the proper legal term is “states parties”) achieve carbon neutrality by 2050—that is to say, that no states parties should produce net greenhouse gas emissions by then.
Consumption-based CO2 emissions, 1950-2020.
India, on the other hand, has pledged to reduce its carbon intensity by 45% or less and increase its renewable energy generation to 500 GW/50% of its total demand by 2030, but only achieve carbon neutrality by 2070. Progress is good, but in the face of increasingly severe climate-related disasters, business as usual is endangering everyone. Economic development put the planet in this skillet, and it’s unlikely to provide the rescue.
Tomorrow: climate change in India.
Be brave,
and be well.
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