CO2 as bad as 4mn years ago
Washington, June Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in May were 50 percent higher than during the pre-industrial era, reaching levels not seen on Earth for about four million years, the main US climate agency said on Friday.
Global warming caused by humans, particularly through the production of electricity using fossil fuels, transport, the production of cement, or even deforestation, is responsible for the new high, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.
May is usually the month with the highest carbon dioxide levels each year.
In May 2022, the threshold of 420 parts per million (ppm) — a unit of measurement used to quantify pollution in the atmosphere — was crossed. In May 2021, the rate was 419 ppm, and in
2020, 417 ppm.
The measurements are taken at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, ideally located high on a volcano, which allows it to escape the possible influence of local pollution.
Before the Industrial Revolution, levels of CO2 held steady at around 280 ppm, a level maintained for approximately 6,000 years of human civilization that preceded industrialization, according to NOAA.
The level now is comparable to what it was between
4.1 and 4.5 million years ago, when CO2 levels were near or above 400 ppm, the agency said in a statement. —
Annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics is set to top 1.2 billion tonnes by 2060 and waste to exceed one billion tonnes, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Even with aggressive action to cut demand and improve efficiencies, plastic production would almost double in less than 40 years, the 38-nation body projects in a report.
Such globally coordinated policies, however, could hugely boost the share of future plastic waste that is recycled, from 12 per cent
40 per cent.
There is increasing international alarm over the volume and omnipresence of plastics pollution, and its impact.
Infiltrating the most remote and otherwise pristine regions of the planet, microplastics have been discovered inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean and locked inside Arctic ice.
Since the 1950s, roughly
8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced with more than 60 percent of that tossed into landfills, burned or dumped directly into rivers and oceans.