Bad News:
“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.”
There was some hope before that one of the few positive side effects of the global recession would be a trend of less of these pollutants. But our continuing fossil-fuel-based energy choices – coal, natural gas, etc – pumped a half-billion extra tons of carbon into our skies in 2010. This is not the path for sustainable development or clean energy implementation—achieving those goals requires a substantial increase in clean, reliable, low-carbon nuclear energy.
