Your Carbon Emissions

In today's society, every item we consume is created by an industrial process, and hence has greenhouse gas emissions associated with it. Not just your car and your electricity and gas but everything:

  • Your clothes.
  • The computer on your desk.
  • The furniture on which you sit.
  • The food that you eat (unless it was grown, harvested and transported entirely by hand).
  • The products you buy.
  • The government services you consume (e.g. roads, health services, defence).

Everything we consume has greenhouse gas emissions associated with it. Below is a graphic that shows the 1999 allocation of greenhouse gas emissions to end user sectors in Australia. This is from Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990, 1995 and 1999, End Use Allocation of Emissions. See Table S3 Allocation of emissions to end use sectors (1999).

End Use Allocation of Emissions.

Living Sustainably - Offsetting your GHG Emissions

Offsetting your GHG Emissions PDF The diagram linked to the icon on the left tells you where Australia's emissions are made, how they are made, and offers tips as to how to reduce the emissions caused by living a modern lifestyle in Australia.

CO2 Emissions Country by Country

The year column is the year for which emissions were assessed. The CO2e column is megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted by the country. The population column is millions of people. The rightmost column provides the average number of tonnes per person. For example, each Australian contributes an average of 27.54 tonnes of carbon dioxide to the Greenhouse Effect each year.

Country Year CO2e Mt / Pop M = CO2e t/person
Albania 1994 7.06 / 3.20 = 2.21
Australia 2000 535.30 / 19.44 = 27.54
Canada 2003 740.00 / 31.56 = 23.45
China 1994 3650.00 / 1198.50 = 3.05
European Union 1999 4030.00 / 375.30 = 10.74
Hong Kong 2003 43.5 / 6.803 = 6.39
India 2001 1228.54 / 914.00 = 1.34
Indonesia 1994 904.433 / 191 = 4.74
Iran 1994 417.01 / 57.67 = 7.23
Israel 1996 62.71 / 5.69 = 11.02
Japan 2002 1224.98 / 126.93 = 9.65
Laos 1990 0 / 4.57 = 0.0
Malaysia 1994 76 / 20.1 = 3.78
Marshall Islands 1990 0.0025 / 0.055 = 0.05
Mexico 2000 686.10 / 97.48 = 7.04
Micronesia 1997 0 / 0.106 = 0.0
Mongolia 1998 15.6 / 2.42 = 6.45
Nauru 1994 0.019 / 0.013 = 1.46
Netherlands 1999 174.10 / 15.80 = 11.02
New Zealand 1999 54.70 / 3.79 = 14.43
Niue 1994 0 / 0.002 = 0.0
Philippines 1994 100.738 / 73.527 = 1.37
Russian Federation 1999 1880.00 / 145.60 = 12.91
Samoa 1999 0.43 / 0.17 = 2.53
Singapore 1994 26.80 / 3.20 = 8.38
Solomon Islands 1994 0.32258 / 0.4 = 0.81
South Africa 1994 379.84 / 40.60 = 9.36
South Korea 1995 391.7 / 45.09 = 8.69
Sweden 2003 70.6 / 8.98 = 7.86
Thailand 1994 286.37 / 62.00 = 4.62
United Kingdom 2003 656.00 / 59.60 = 11.01
US 2002 6746.00 / 280.00 = 24.09
Zimbabwe 1994 0.00 / 10.64 = 0.0

For detailed references for the above table, visit the Carbopedia Country Emissions Page.

How to Remove your CO2 footprint

The only way to avoid Greenhouse emissions would be to go live in a cave without power or heat (no little camp fires allowed!) and make everything (I mean everything!) by hand; You can't have any livestock either as one tonne of methane contributes to the greenhouse effect as much as 21 tonnes of carbon dioxide!

Living in a cave, while an adventure perhaps, is not exactly plausible. The alternative is to remove the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in the short term while trusting that, globally, people are working to develop new, more Earth-friendly technologies in the mid to long term.

Carbon credits empower anyone to take ownership of their personal greenhouse emissions. By purchasing a subscription of sufficient carbon credits you can eliminate your personal impact on the greenhouse effect.