Welcome to Zerocarbon2030.com. Look around, it’s a beautiful day.
The sun is shining; the trees are in full bloom and fresh air courses
through your lungs. We live on such a beautiful planet, but at the current
rate of pollution, it won’t stay like that. Instead, we’re
seeing some of the most dramatic changes in Earth’s history: 11
of the last 12 years have been the warmest since 1850, raising ocean
levels, stronger westerly winds, and droughts last longer and are more
intense (cover larger areas). Despite some political/corporate punditry
that says otherwise, global warming is not a myth that we can brush
aside, and any effort to reduce our carbon dioxide emission will curb
the effects of global warming.
Zerocarbon2030.com is a site dedicated to providing valuable information
about the effects of global warming. We are not sponsored by any activist
group, corporation or otherwise – all our information is unbiased
and based on professional research. We just want to raise the general
awareness of how carbon emissions negatively impact our world.
First off: what is global warming? The term refers to climate change
caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human-produced technology.
Although CO2 is naturally found in our atmosphere, it’s only a
small portion of it (only .04%). When infrared waves from the sun enter
our atmosphere, most of them are reflected from the earth’s surface.
A small amount of those reflected rays become absorbed by CO2, which
is partly responsible for maintaining the earth’s temperature.
However, when there is an abundance of CO2 in our atmosphere (emitted
by our automobiles and factories), it absorbs more rays – thereby
warming causing global warming. Think of our planet as your car left
out in a parking lot on a sunny day – this is the greenhouse effect.
The United States has the highest rate of carbon emissions on the planet
– close to 1,600 metric tons of carbon are released each year.
That’s about 25 percent of the whole world’s pollution!
The carbon output of this country is double that of the next largest
polluter, China.
Most of the energy generated by power plants in the United States comes
from burning fossil fuels. When we use less energy, fewer fossil fuels
are consumed which means less pollution.
Energy use by:
• Commercial buildings generates 18% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions
• Industrial facilities generates 33% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions
30 percent of energy consumed in buildings is used unnecessarily or
inefficiently!
In the United States, approximately 6.6 tons (almost 15,000 pounds carbon
equivalent) of greenhouse gases are emitted per person every year. Emissions
per person have increased about 3.4% between 1990 and 1997. These are
all frightening statistics, but it will be more frightening if we don’t
do anything to curb our emissions!
ZeroCarbon projects around the world have sprung up in an attempt to
slow the alarming speed of climate change happening right now. There
are groups of scientists, economists, and professionals who are deeply
concerned about climate change and its potential effects on our lives,
those of our children, and the natural world – on local and global
scales.