Global, Regional, and National CO₂ Emissions

NORTH AMERICA

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What countries constitute North America?

Trends

North America, as defined here, consists of the United States and Canada. North America is the highest fossil-fuel, CO₂ emitting region of the world with 1.82 billion tons of carbon in 2004. This 2004 total is an all-time high for North America and represents a 1.6% increase from 2003. Because ~90% of current fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions from the region are from the United States, the time series for North America closely resembles that for the United States. In addition, the patterns of change for the two countries have been similar in gross features, although they differ in detail because of political and resource differences. In contrast with CO₂ emissions from other regions, the striking features are a relatively uniform growth rate from 1950 to 1973 (2.8% per year), an essentially constant rate of emissions from 1973 to 1987, growth during the 1990s leading to record highs in 2004. Because of more rapid growth elsewhere, emissions from North America have shrunk from 46.4% of the global total in 1950 to 24.3% in 2004. Per capita emissions have been consistently high and well above those for any other region.