Climate Change
Australian total emissions, million tonnes of CO2 in 2007 were 396 Mt. Per capita Australians were in 2007 among the top climate change polluter nations of the world. Australian emissions of carbon dioxide per capita in 2007 were 18.8 tons CO2 compared to EU 27 average 7.9 tons. Emission change 2007/1990 (%) was +52.5 % compared to EU 27 average -3.3 %.
In March 2009 the British economist Nicholas Stern warned the governments in the international climate meeting of the high cost of climate change. He said policy-makers needed to think the likely impact of temperature rises of 6C or more. The target of limiting temperature rise to 2C above pre-industrial levels is no longer realistic because the world emissions have grown faster than expected. An increase of more than 5C is "likely to lead to major disruption and large-scale movement of population". It said the effects would be "catastrophic" and "far outside human experience".
The footprint per person in Australia was the 12 th top in the world by PNAS in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Energy In Australia
Famous quotes containing the words climate and/or change:
“The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the great and deep qualities of mind, heart, and soul, there is no change. Homer and Solomon speak to the same nature in man that is reached by Shakespeare and Lincoln. but in the accidents, the surroundings, the change is vast. All things now are mobile—movable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)