The U.S. strives to become like Haiti

Our future looks darker every day as our presidential candidates promise us a future in which we will reduce our Green House Gas (GHG - primarily CO2) emissions by 80% by the year 2050. Ouch! Let's put that into perspective, shall we? The U.S. currently emits around 6 billion tons of CO2. An 80% reduction would take us down to around 1 billion tons. Let's see - when were we last at 1 billion tons of CO2 emissions as a country? In 1910 - the end of the horse and buggy era. BUT - in 1910 we only had 92 million people. In 2050 we're projected to have 420 million people. That means, whereas we emit 19.5MT of CO2 per capita today, in 2050 we'd only have an allowance of 2.5MT per capita. We last saw that level of CO2 emission in the year 1875! Currently, the nations that have emissions that low are Haiti, Somalia, and Botswana. Now there's a goal for U.S. Even France and Switzerland, the developed countries with the lowest per capita CO2 emissions, are presently at 6.5MT - and that's because they generate their electricity with nuclear power plants and have very small, compact countries. For comparison, one Toyota Prius, driven the national average of 10,000 miles per year, would emit 1.8MT of CO2 - nearly all of a person's annual allowance! Further, the EPA estimates that to reach this level of per capita emissions, our economy would have to shrink by 6% per year, which would put us out of business by 2030. That is some worthwhile goal. Think about it.

For further enlightenment, see the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seGyLIrH1-4.