First, it’s freezing. Then, it’s 60 degrees and thundering. Now we are on to snow storm after snow storm. Chicago weather has been something else this year and as it turns out, it might be partly our fault.
The Department of Energy recently released the 2010 data for carbon dioxide emissions per state. For Illinois, the results were mixed. 2010 emissions were up just 1.9% from the previous year; however, remember that this was still in the midst of the Great Recession. While some states such as Florida (8.7%) and Texas (4.4%) were higher year over year, a more long-term perspective is needed to fully understand the numbers. When you look at emissions since 1990, Illinois is right in the middle (22nd highest).
But lets look closer what the middle means, since 1990 Illinois has increased consumption by 38.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, an increase of 20.3%
This is equivalent to turning on 11 coal power plants. I then checked the origin of this increase – was it simply more folks coming to Illinois and using less or were Illinoisans emitting more. As it turned out Illinois’s population did increase by 12%. However, overall CO2 emissions per capita did increase from 16.7 metric tons/yr to 18.0 metric tons/yr. This also happens to be approximately the national average in 2010.
So let’s think globally with this graph I put together using official Department of Energy data (click below for a better view):
http://internationalchicago.com/2013/02/05/whose-responsible-for-chicagos-crazy-weather/
No comments:
Post a Comment