CARBON EMISSIONS ROSE 5.9 PERCENT IN 2010

CO2 EMISSIONS IN 2010 SHOW
BIGGEST INCREASE EVER RECORDED

www.nytimes.com - Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery.  Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.  The researchers said the high growth rate reflected a bounce-back from the 1.4 percent drop in emissions in 2009, the year the recession had its biggest impact. 

The new figures come as delegates from 191 countries meet in Durban, South Africa, for yet another negotiating session in a global control effort that has been going on, with minimal success, for the better part of two decades. The growth rate in the 1990s was closer to 1 percent yearly. In the United States, emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the recession year of 2009, but rose by just over 4 percent last year, the new analysis shows. This country is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pumping 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere last year.  The United States was surpassed several years ago by China, where emissions grew 10.4 percent in 2010, with that country injecting 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide emissions are usually measured by the weight of carbon they contain.

If the extraordinary growth persists, it means little progress in limiting greenhouse gases.  Scientists say the rapid growth of emissions is warming the Earth, threatening the ecology 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, including the United States, because doing so would entail higher energy costs.  Planet earth is suffering for the destruction of rainforests to create pasture lands for livestock. Take out meat from your human diet!

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

Many of the world’s massive environmental problems could be solved by the reduction or elimination of meat-eating, including global warming, loss of topsoil, loss of rainforests and species extinction.  The temperature of the earth is rising. This global warming, known as “the greenhouse effect,” results primarily from carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas. Three times more fossil fuels must be burned to produce a meat-centered diet than for a meat-free diet. If people stopped eating meat, the threat of higher world temperatures would be vastly diminished. ... Meat-eating is the number one driving force for the destruction of these forests. Two-hundred and sixty million acres of U.S. forestland has been cleared for cropland to produce the meat-centered diet. Fifty-five square feet of tropical rainforest is consumed to produce every quarter-pound of rainforest beef.  An alarming 75% of all U.S. topsoil has been lost to date. Eighty-five percent of this loss is directly related to livestock raising.

 

Hinduism Today :
“How to Win an Argument with a Meat Eater”
“The Environmental Argument against meat-eating”
http://www.eatveg.com/argument.htm
http://www.hinduismtoday.com/
http://www.himalayanacademy.com/resources/pamphlets/WinMeatEaterArgument.html