In 2023, according to data in the latest (2024) Emissions Gap Report from the United Nations Environment Programme with the clever title “No more hot air … please!,” greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale totaled 57.1 billion (giga) tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. America’s contribution to that total weighs in at 11 percent, right behind China’s 30 percent.
What this means is that the United States that year outputted 6.281 billion tons of CO2e into the world’s atmosphere, a little more than a third of China’s contribution which was 17.13 billion tons in 2023.
The largest percentage of the 6.281 billion tons CO2e emissions contribution in the U.S. came from the transport sector which, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data amounts to 28 percent. This compares to average global contribution sitting at 15 percent.[1] Twenty-eight percent translates to 1.75868 billion tons CO2e emissions entering the air in 2023 from transportation. It’s considerable. This appears to be up slightly from 2022’s numbers.
In the United States in 2016, interestingly, transport emissions overtook those from the energy sector, transportation now (and since then) being the one sector contributing the most in the way of emissions into the atmosphere. What’s responsible for this switch is more and more of the domestic energy being renewably generated meaning less and less of such generation being fossil-fuel derived. That, plus the fact that emissions from transport — despite the numbers of electric and other types of zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) operating on American roadways being what they are — have increased every year since 2020 (Fig 2.4 “GHG emissions of the six largest GHG emitters,” Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air … please!, p. 11). The GHG-emissions contribution from domestic transport is high (28 percent), comparatively speaking, and growing.
Can that be turned around? Absolutely. More reliance on public transit and active transportation methods like walking and biking with less dependence on driving (driving being the primary means of getting around in the U.S.) to meet everyday mobility needs, can make that happen. For those who do drive, switching to less harmful-to-the-air-and-to-human-health methods of doing so, can help, but such cannot be done to the extent that it is presently nor carried out in a way that totally excludes sustainable modes of travel, that is, if positive difference is to be expected.
Interestingly and as it relates, just this past Election Day (November 5, 2024), 19 out of 25 public-transit-based measures across the country saw success at the ballot box.
Which just goes to show that we have it within our power to make both substantive and positive changes.
Notes
1. United Nations Environment Programme, Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air … please!, “Executive Summary,” p. XII
Corresponding, connected home-page-featured image: U.S. Department of Energy: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (www.eere.energy.gov) at Wikipedia