Thursday, February 15, 2007

How to destroy a planet

From the drainage of its peatlands alone Indonesia is producing 632 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. But from its annual forest fires, it produces another 1,400 million tonnes. That's a total of 2,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The Netherlands emits 80 million.
-- Marcel Silvius, a senior programme manager for Wetlands International, speaking to Lucy Williamson (Smoking out the world's lungs).

If these figures are accurate it means that per capita emissions for Indonesia (220 million people), not including combustion of fossil fuels, are nearly twice those of the Netherlands (15 million), including fossil fuels and all other sources.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

To be fair the Netherlands is a much richer place, and for them it is much more afforable to keep CO2 emissions down.