Phytoplankton are responsible for between 50 and 80% of the oxygen in the atmosphere https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-oxygen.html
Phytoplankton population has declines almost 40% since the 50's. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/phytoplankton-pop...
As the oceans warm and more fresh water is released into the ocean from melting ice it caused the ocean to become more acidic, which is causing the phytoplankton population to decline further. Also as the water warms different types of phytoplankton increase and not all as economics at converting CO2 into oxygen, and some create other problems.
https://theweek.com/articles/747106/climate-change-putting-o...
Phytoplankton are the basis for the marine food chain
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/plankton-revealed/
Over 3 Billion people rely on the oceans as their main source of protein.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood
There is nothing we can do as a "stop gap" solution for the oceans, and phytoplankton, just like any natural system in decline the phytoplankton population will continue a slow decrease and then when it hits a tipping point it will crash.
When the phytoplankton population crashes, and it will, the impact will be catastrophic. Short of inventing a technology to capture and sequester 45 Billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere each and every year, there is nothing we can do to stop or even slow down what's happening to the oceans.
It's closer to 3x: USA 15.7 vs France 5.2 tonnes of CO2 per capita per year (2017, not accounting for other gasses that contribute to warming) [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
I.e., if the US had the same per capita nuclear power generation as France, what would the numbers look like?
US emissions are ~29% transportation and ~27% electricty generation [1]. The US uses ~13x as much oil [2].
Natural Gas isn't particularly dirty. Coal and petroleum only make up 24% of power generation in the US [3]. Fossil fuels make up ~9% of electricity production in France [4].
[1] https://images.app.goo.gl/9YFsuN9vjkiiZnek9
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consu...
[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-....
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France#:...).
Just a small nit but the OP was referencing CO2. Natural gas is cleaner than other fossil fuels. “Clean” != low carbon (although it’s lower than other fossil fuels)
The car model of a city is what is destroying our environment. North America needs better urban planning if we have any chance at all in making a dent in global climate change.
https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statis...
The biggest driver of loss of woodland, I assume, has been the same as in the Amazon today - farming and logging.
Wikipedia tells me estimates put the 14th century population of England at somewhere between 3.7 and 7 million. The table suggests a downward trend of woodland over time, which I assume would be driven by industry and therefore related to population. Today, urban and industrial land use must be massively higher than it was then, meaning that in relative trends the loss of woodland was even more profound.
How could people in medieval times have required the same footprint of de-wooded land as a population 14 times larger today (even accounting for more efficient farms, move to fossil fuels and nuclear, etc)? What would the natural woodland cover be with no human inhabitants - surely at least 50%?
While I am glad that we have done some progress, there is a large caveat to it. The enthusiasm was great until the grid hit 100% capacity, at which point investment to build more dropped quickly. At the same time the average production rate per day is around 40-50%, which remained is mostly produced through heavily subsidized fossil fuels. It is a leadership of a kind, but it is too early to say if it can produce a solution long term.
And yes, China and India are now large, significant sources of CO2 emissions and both those countries need to do more. There is no solution to global climate change without China and India. If you look at CO2 emissions in the US since 2000 we've dropped -- the trend lines are good, the US is doing its part.
India and China need to do theirs.
And I will just ignore the population bomb that is going off in Africa at the moment.
Do people in US have twice better life? They don't, its just that the policy doesnt give a flying fuck about environment. The government spends more on military programs to defend from hypothetical weapons that dont exist yet, than it does on dealing with the certainty of climate change.
People here bitching about brazil removing forest, forest cover of UK is like 12%, one of the lowest in thw world. The 'ambition' is to plant like 2% more trees in 30 years. We just cut it down years ago, and so are off the hook.
You know what the wealthy countries should have done? Funded development of fusion properly, actually invested in renewables and shared technology with developing nations, had electric vehicles in mass production by 2010. Then you could do around and point at aome poor farmer fuck knows where trying to feed his family.
As things stand China has 10x more electric buses than the rest of the world combined, a couple Nordic countries have shown leadership in Wind. But most of western world is not just complicit, but a partner in crime, has actively enabled and protected their oil firms to commit literal crimes.