Carbon Dioxide Emissions Accelerating Rapidly

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels stood at a record 8.38 gigatons of carbon (GtC) in 2006, 20 percent above the level in 2000. Emissions grew 3.1 percent a year between 2000 and 2006, more than twice the rate of growth during the 1990s. Carbon dioxide emissions have been growing steadily for 200 years, since fossil fuel burning began on a large scale at the start of the Industrial Revolution. But the growth in emissions is now accelerating despite unambiguous evidence that carbon dioxide is warming the planet and disrupting ecosystems around the globe.

In 2000, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) laid out projections of how greenhouse gas emissions were likely to evolve during the twenty-first century due to economic, demographic, and technological changes. The high-end scenario combined rapid economic growth and globalization with intensive fossil fuel use and was used as the IPCC