To hear the “greens” tell it, the United States is the worst polluter on earth, guilty of destroying the environment and dooming us all to ever increasing temperatures and disastrous flooding. Recent news reveals that China is the number one polluter on the planet in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, and we’re all warned that unless we become more like simpler, smaller nations the whole world will pay the price.
I have a question for readers, though: what country leads the world in carbon emissions per capita? No, its not China, although that’s a good guess. No, its not the US, although you’ve probably been told that before.
Here’s the actual list courtesy the U.S. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center:
- Qatar 51.3
- Kuwait 34.0
- United Arab Emirates 30.9
- Bahrain 29.5
- Trinidad and Tobago 27.7
- Luxembourg 24.2
- Brunei 19.5
- United States 19.0
- Australia 17.7
- Saudi Arabia 16.9
See all those Arabian Peninsula countries? 6 of the top ten emitters by population are from that small area on the globe. How Trinidad and Tobago, a speck of an island in the Caribbean got in there is that they too have gas and oil (but more gas). Luxembourg I’d guess is because it is so small but so densely populated as a modern western nation.
The list for total carbon emissions is a bit different, and it is more like what you’ve been told. In essence, the most advanced and largest industrial nations lead the list (number listed is in millions of tons):
- China 7,426.4
- U.S. 5,951.0
- Russia 1,534.4
- India 1,529.1
- Japan 1,225.2
- Germany 796.6
- South Korea 664.2
- Canada 605.9
- Saudi Arabia 544.4
- Iran 544.4
Mind you, the middle east still ranks pretty high. And keep in mind here that some of these are estimates from countries who tend not to be entirely reliable in their reporting, such as China and Russia. Other nations, such as North Korea and Burma are very low on the list. When you live in a backwater hell hole, your carbon emissions tend to be low.
And that’s the secret the “greens” don’t want us to consider; if your nation is able to lower its carbon emissions to what they consider reasonable, it becomes a backwater hell hole with poverty, disease, and misery the primary national product.
