If you divide carbon emissions by more and more wealth, relative numbers obviously go down. Nature doesn't care much for relative numbers. How about the absolute numbers? I think they show that more wealth means more carbon emissions (that's excluding all the carbon emissions it took to create that wealth).
Sorry Neven but the stats are not that simple and are not quite as easy to manipulate.
Let us take the US and India.
Nobody can say that India is a monumental mountain of wealth, it is, however, a mountain of people who are, in the most part, poor.
Since 1960, Indian CO2 emissions have grown nearly 570%. The US, on the other hand, has grown by 3% over the same period. Regardless of the mass of wealth or concentration of wealth or use of resources.
India is forecast to increase their emissions by more than 0.5% per year over the next decade, whereas the US is forecast to reduce slightly.
It is not the wealth you have which is the issue. It is what you DO with that wealth. The UK has reduced emissions by 58% over the same time period. Germany about 40% or so, France only around 20%, Belgium nearly flat, the Netherlands has grown by nearly 90%.
The stats are
here.
Back to cars.
Certainly. But we might want to take this discussion somewhere else as it is not going to end here.
