Things are worse than we thought...

I read today in the New Scientist that a research team looking at the growth of CO2 emissions over the past few decades have determined that our rate of output of CO2 exceeds the worst-case scenario published earlier this year by the IPCC.

It seems that before 2000, our global population was fairly efficient (measured as amount of carbon emission per unit GDP.) However, since then, we have become much less efficient at using carbon (measured from 2000 to 2004, when the study ended).

Not surprisingly, the reason for that appears to be the accelerated economic development of developing countries, where they account of 73% of the growth of CO2 emissions, but 41% of total global emissions.

Obviously, we need a new round of international agreements to take into account this growth on the part of developing countries.