The main inspiration for this project came after learning about CO2 emissions into the atmosphere in my sustainable systems class. I was always taught about climate change and the causes of it, but it never occurred to me just how quickly we were moving towards the end goal. One article that really struck my attention was one discussing how The New School decided to withdraw their investment from Fossil Fuel Stock (1). Once recognizing how dedicated my school was to changing the climate I decided to delve deep into research on the effects of CO2 on the environment created mainly by Fossil Fuels. I discovered that humans were responsible for almost all of the green house gasses in the atmosphere (2). On the Environmental Protection agency website, 30% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is from burning fossil fuels in order to generate electricity, and 21% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere is simply due to factories (3). Since the year of 1970, CO2 emissions increased by about 90% (4). After learning these facts, I thought it would be interesting to see the hotspots of the most CO2 emissions around the world and where the most emissions were located. When I sought out to see how much CO2 each country emits I hypothesized that the more industrialized countries would emit more CO2, and just as suspected they did. This process really opened my eyes to the amount of CO2 that we as a world use. By emitting the borders it symbolizes how we all only have one world and borders to do not change the fact that we are all putting CO2 into the atmosphere.
- John Schwartz, “The New School Divests Fossil Fuel Stock and Refocuses on Climate Change ,” The New York Times, February 6, 2015, , accessed March 13, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/science/the-new-school-takes-a-big-step-beyond-divesting-fossil-fuel-stock.html?_r=1.
- IPCC (2007). Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.
- “Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” EPA. February 14, 2017. Accessed March 13, 2017. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions.
- “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data,” EPA, February 14, 2017, , accessed March 15, 2017, https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Country.
