Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record in 2010: Emissions rose 5:9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released on Sunday by the Global Carbon Project.
Scientists said the increase was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution. The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to stop severe climate change in coming decades.
The burning of coal represented more than half of the growth in emissions, the analysis found. In the United States, emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the year of 2009, but rose by over 4 percent in 2010, the new analysis shows.
“Each year, emissions go up, and there’s another year of negotiations, another year of indecision,” said Glen P. Peters, a researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research. “There’s no evidence that this path we’ve been following in the last 10 years is going to change.”
Scientists say the rapid growth of emissions is warming the Earth and putting human welfare at long-term risk. But their increasingly urgent pleas that society find a way to limit emissions have met sharp political resistance in many countries because doing so would involve higher energy costs.
The new figures show a continuation of a trend in which developing countries have surpassed the wealthy countries in their overall greenhouse emissions. In 2010, the burning of fossil fuels and the production of cement sent more than nine billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, the new analysis found, with 57 percent of that coming from developing countries.
On the surface, the figures of recent years suggest that wealthy countries have made headway in stabilizing their emissions. But Dr. Peters pointed out that, in a sense, the rich countries have simply exported some of them.
The fast rise in developing countries has been caused to a large extent by the growth of energy- intensive manufacturing industries that make goods that rich countries import. “All that has changed is the location in which the emissions are being produced,” Dr. Peters said.
Many countries, as part of their response to the economic crisis, invested billions in programs designed to make their energy systems greener. While it is possible, the new numbers suggest they have had little effect so far.
Many governments in the world resist limiting emissions because ________.
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