Maldives' Contribution to Climate Change

The graph above depicts the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.  There is an overall increase in CO2 throughout the years, starting at around 318 parts per million and ending up today at approximately 395 parts per million.  The up and down pattern shown on the graph is a result of photosynthesis.  CO2 is low in the summers when plants are full of life and taking it all in, and it is high in the winters when plants die or go dormant.

The increase in CO2 is directly caused by humans.  We are burning so many fossil fuels every day, releasing an incredible amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Also with so many people on this earth we are destroying ecosystems to put up new housing developments, lowering the ability for the planet to help off set the damage we have done.  CO2 is a greenhouse gas, one of the many causes of global warming.

I used information from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center for my below graph to compare CO2 emissions from different countries.

Regarding the countries that I graphed, the United States had the largest amount of longterm emissions, however, China recently spiked, surpassing the US drastically.  The Maldives is buried beneath several other countries on the graph because of its low emissions.  

The Maldives biggest, rather only, emission source is from liquid fuels, as of 2008 they were emitting 251 thousand metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere.  I was surprised to learn that this is in fact the only source of emissions in the Maldives.  However, I was not surprised to learn that emissions are so low there seeing as the islands are so small.  In comparison, China was last recorded at around 2.3 million metric tons.  The Maldives is a drop in the bucket compared to China.

The United States has a 4.7 metric tons of carbon per capita rate.  To some this may seem relatively reasonable.  Then, compared to the Maldives' per capita rate of 0.82, it seems kind of ridiculous.  After discovering this information, I was disgusted that I live in the United States and am a contributor to this madness, I don't want my number to be 4.7 metric tons. 

The Maldives ranks 104 out of 216 countries based on per capita CO2 emissions.  It is a decent ranking, but I was somewhat shocked that the Maldives weren't further down the list after my previous research.  I was so proud of the Maldives, with good reason, but I wasn't aware that over half of all countries are doing better.  Although, I am still proud of that rank, especially compared to the United States which ranked 12 on the list.

China has a population of about one billion more than the United States, that is a lot of people. When comparing their fossil fuel emissions on the graph above, its disgusting to see that the US was steadily, and significantly higher than China until recent years, and is still fairly close behind.  The United States has one billion less people than China, which logically would mean the US should be lacking such high emissions.  The United States is far more accountable for its emissions than China.