Greenhouse gas emissions still rising in Australia

Despite plenty of talk about the necessity to cut down greenhouse gas emissions as some sort of global world action against global warming, this scenario is still many miles away from reality. In fact not only that there hasn't been any significant decrease in cutting down the global greenhouse gas emissions, quite opposite there is an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in many countries around the world. One of these countries is Australia, that is among top five greenhouse gas emitters in the world.

International research, together with the help of CSIRO carbon specialists showed that Australia's greenhouse gas emissions are still rising by about two per cent a year. Climate change adviser Ross Garnaut has called for Australia to cut emissions by 10 per cent by 2020, based on 2000 levels, which is of course impossible with current emission levels, and would require reducing emissions by 1.5 per cent each year, which is in Australia's case very unlikely scenario.

Australia is one of several other developed countries that had rapid greenhouse gas emission growth starting from the year 2000. Australia and other major emitting countries like China, USA, India are mainly responsible why global greenhouse gas emissions are rising by 3.5 per cent a year, compared to levels of 1990s, when emissions rose by about one per cent a year.

Australia has the highest emission growth rate of all developed countries, and is not doing much to reverse this negative trend. This is partly due to the Kyoto process under which other developed nations were told to cut their emissions, unlike Australia that was allowed to increase emissions by eight per cent. And Australia gets more than 3/4 of its energy from coal powered plants that are among biggest industrial emitters.

Australia really needs some efficient plan because such rapid greenhouse gas emissions rate is more than alarming, especially since Australia is among top five emitters in the world, and is doing little (if anything) to reverse this negative trend. Australia should definitely invest more in renewable energy sector, and turn to cleaner energy technologies. If we want to cut down greenhouse gas emission on global level, all countries should be included, especially big, developed countries like Australia.

As you can see from this picture Australia's greenhouse gases emissions have been constantly rising, mainly because Australia's energy sector is still largely based on coal powered plants.