AP Interactive Map of Climate Emissions, Indications and Pledges

A very beautifully designed interactive map via the AP Climate Pool shows which countries were naughty and which countries were nice when it comes to their greenhouse gas emissions, and also shows each nation’s pledges to do better in the future.

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As you hover over each of the bars on the right, you see the results. The first thing that jumped out at me was this result: for Russia.  What is your first thought when you see that Russian result?

I have to confess my ungenerous thought was – Thank God for the collapse of the Soviet Union! Imagine if things had been going gangbusters there since 1990, think how much worse things would be.

So, a big thank you is due to President Reagan! Let’s hope one Republican’s success in keeping greenhouse gases down in Russia serves as an inspiration to the current crop of Senate Republicans currently obstructing and boycotting clean energy bills.

Clearly Chernobyl had a huge effect too. Check out all those ex-soviet nations to the West. Joining the EU also helped them reduce emissions as they cleaned up those unregulated ex-soviet environmental disasters of factories. Many fascinating facts in this.

But the title for this graph is silly.

No doubt as temperatures keep on going up, next year we’ll have Copenhagen to blame. Then the year after that, we’ll blame the Mexico Accord, then the 2011 in Brazil. In the meantime Brazillions and Brazillions of people are joining the developed world every year, and not just in Brazil. That’s what’s driving temperatures up; not working out international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Kudos to the AP Climate Pool for their great Copenhagen reporting and for this wonderful tool.

Source: Twitter AP_ClimatePool