Is AB 32 merely symbolic in the battle against CO2 emissions?

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

I'm a nerd. I'm actually a bit bummed that I don't get gadgets to review like the gadget blogs. (Hey, as an aside, I might begin a weekly non-politics review of random stuff...let me know your thoughts.)   Long story short, I read all the tech blogs.

Yesterday, over at Wired, there was a post about a report commissioned by the airline industry about emissions. Turns out the report didn't come out in their favor so they politely "declined" it.  How sweet.

But this report shows that we have a long, long way to go.  We will need to rapidly change how we live, how we do business if we are to really change the course of climate change.  Airline emissions are really, really high:

A recently disclosed report finds that airlines are spewing 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the environment than previously estimated and the amount could hit 1.5 billion tons a year by 2025. That's far more than even the worst-case predictions laid out by the International Panel on Climate Change.

If you're looking to put that number in perspective, the European Union currently emits 3.1 billion tons of CO2 annually. Yup, that's the entire 27-nation, 457 million person EU.

"Growth of CO2 emissions on this scale will comfortably outstrip any gains made by improved technology and ensure aviation is an even larger contributor to global warming by 2025 than previously thought,"  Jeff Gazzard, a spokesman for the Aviation Environment Federation, the group that uncovered the report, told the Independent. "Governments must take action to put a cap on air transport's unrestrained growth." (Wired 5/7/08)

California is a big source of emissions. I would tell you how much, but unfortunately, the CA Climage Change Center seems to have taken down their report on Trends in California Emissions Levels. That's too bad, because it had all sorts of information on emission levels. Nonetheless, I can tell you the report was measured in millions, rather than billions of tons. So, even a 20% reduction in our emissions levels only puts a small dent in the problem.

We need to do more. Much of that has to be done by individuals like us who are living in "rich nations." We most consciously choose to eschew waste. That being said, even the poorest of Americans still has a carbon footprint more than double the world average, according to a study by an MIT class. AB 32 should not be considered an endpoint, but a first step.