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.

 

 

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