What’s impacting our environment most?

Greenhouse gases, including CO2 and methane trap the heat and make the planet warmer. Human activities are responsible for almost all of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 150 years. 

This include both the planet unrelenting industrial development and its endless and as of yet, wild population growth. The world over, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, agriculture, industry, transportation and climate control.

Since 1970 and through 2020, emissions of CO2 have been going up and are showing no sign of letting down. We know which the largest polluters are, as China, the US and India are sharing the podium in this horrible contest. We often only think about transportation and climate control when talking about what creates global warming, but these are not the largest economic sectors contributing to CO2 emissions. 

Those are electricity production (25% of greenhouse gas emissions), the agriculture, land use and forestry (24%) that includes greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture come from livestock such as cows, agricultural soils, and rice production, while land use and forestry can act as a sink in absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere or a source of emissions.

Since 1990 the US forest and lands are a net sink, in that they’ve absorbed more CO2 from the atmosphere than they emit. Industry is another large contributor to greenhouse gases at 21% (24% in the US alone) It comes from industry primarily burning fossil fuels for energy, as well as from certain processes and chemical reactions necessary to produce goods from raw materials. 

Transportation plays also a huge role, that vary a lot per country (14% worldwide, but 27% in the US) and includes cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes. Finally buildings, both commercial and residential (6% worldwide, but 13% in the US) emit from fossil fuels burned for heat, the use of certain products that contain greenhouse gases, and the handling of waste. 

With such a diverse and complex number of sources and so many countries that need to march on the same drumbeat, there are some good reasons to be pessimistic as to humanity’s ability to extract itself from the global warming predicament...