World Map of CO2 Emissions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

World Map of CO2 Emissions - Essay Example United States of America ranked first then with average emissions of 19.54 metric tones/capita followed by Canada, Russia, and the UK. Developing countries like India and China lagged at the tail end then.   The Fourth Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded among other things that â€Å"warming of the climate system is unequivocal† and that â€Å"anthropogenic warming over the last three decades has likely had discernible influence at the global scale on observed changes in many physical and biological systems.† The report also stated that human activities have a significant impact on climate change.   The Gross Domestic Product is one of the primary indicators calculated to assess the health of a country’s economy. It represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period. According to the Environment Kuznets hypothesis, environmental pressure increases faster than the income in the early stages of development and slows down relative to GDP growth as higher income levels are reached. The EKC proposes that indicators of environmental degradation first rise, and then fall with increasing income per capita.   There are views supporting and criticizing this theory. Those views supporting it emphasize that the curve exists through it is becoming smaller in nature and shifting to the left(revised EKC) whereas those criticizing it argues that even if certain pollutants are reduced as income increases, industrial society continuously creates new, unregulated and potentially toxic pollutants.