With any large problem it is important to understand its fundamental drivers. Thus, with climate change it is important to understand the sources and economic forces behind the increasing anthropic emissions.
A mountain of good material exist on carbon emissions generally and there is little value in repeating those. However, we found surprisingly little analysis about the underlying economic drivers of emissions: recent shifting industrial of production on the back of globalization, growth in the newly emerging nations, and the type of energy production that this necessitates.
In particular, the newly industrializing nations are building disproportionate amount of power plants needed for manufacturing, for example the type needed for electricity grids’ base-loads. These explain a significant portion of the last forty years’ emission increases. This is also clearly evidenced by detailed time-lapse maps on world’s carbon dioxide emissions from 1959-present.
As these choices are driven by clear, raw economic rationale, it also suggests that attempts to limit climate change by reducing carbon emissions in developed nations alone (or even worldwide) is unlikely to be enough.
The sections below summarize main macroeconomic factors driving the emissions and how this is clearly evident in the time-lapse maps of world’s emissions:
