Word: co2
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...year. (You need at least 12 months of data, to set a reliable baseline for your carbon emissions before you try to reduce them.) Using that data, the site can establish a very rough carbon footprint for your household - the U.S. average is approximately 30 tons of CO2 per year per family. If you can then reduce your emissions, whether by simply using less electricity or by installing energy-efficient technology, like better boilers and compact fluorescent lightbulbs, the site will calculate how much carbon you've saved. Those translate into carbon credits of 1 ton of CO2 avoided...
Developed countries like the U.S., which refused to ratify the original treaty, are responsible for most of the CO2 in the atmosphere - and more than a century of industrialization has helped make them rich - which would indicate that they should shoulder the lion's share of future emissions reductions. But fast-growing developing nations like China, which has already passed the U.S. as the world's top carbon emitter, will be responsible for the majority of future emissions, so any global treaty that completely exempted them would be worthless. That debate - or standoff, really - has all but paralyzed global climate...
...distribution from each country to estimate the emissions of individuals in each nation. For example, Australia and France have similar income levels - but because Australia uses more carbon-heavy fuels like coal, there are more Australians than French producing high levels of carbon emissions (above 10 metric tons of CO2 a year). The researchers then compiled those numbers to get a global estimate of how carbon emissions are distributed individually; unsurprisingly, about half of the world's emissions in 2008 came from the planet's 700 million richest people. (See the top 10 green stories...
Those numbers could be used by governments to establish a pathway for future emissions reductions. Suppose, for example, we wanted to hit a global emissions target of 30 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2030, or about a 30% cut from the business-as-usual forecast of 42 billion metric tons. That would translate to a global individual emissions cap of 10.8 metric tons of CO2, which 1.13 billion people - less than 15% of the global population in 2030 - would exceed. Emissions-reduction efforts would focus on the well-off people above the cap, whatever country they live in. That...
...species will adjust to a warmer world. The environment has always driven natural selection - successful species adapt to their surroundings, or they die - and while the environment has also always changed, never has it done so as quickly as it does today, thanks to the billions of tons of CO2 we're shoveling into the atmosphere. (Watch TIME's video "How to Shear a Sheep...