So, my brother emails me cra..er, stuff from his favorite conservative blogs every other day, and I spend about 5 minutes doing the quick research necessary to humiliate him (and then my other brother 'piles on' for the fun of it). Today's email cited an American Enterprise (ahem Oil) Institute study showing that non-Kyoto countries had smaller increases in greenhouse gases (GHGs) than Kyoto signatories (21% to 18% for 1997-2004), with the U.S. alone only having increases of 6.6% over that period.

First, I called out the unusual choice of years, since Kyoto always refers to 1990 baselines. If you start with 1990, the U.S. had a 16% overall increase in GHGs, compared to the European Union's 2% ddecrease.

So what about this AEI report? You see, China and India are technically signatories to Kyoto, but without obligation other than monitoring and reporting emisions (no reductions). oth have increases of about 50% over the 1990-2004 period, hence the huge disparity.

The decision was made to allow them growth based on their lower per-capita emissions (e.g., giving them a chance to 'catch up' economically). If you want to look at it as a per capita increase over the time period 1990-2004:

United States: +2600 lbs/person (up to about 40 lbs/person)
China: + 2500 lbs/person (up to about 7.7 lbs/person)
India: + 800 lbs/person (up to only 2.4 lbs/person)
EU: - 300 lbs/person (12.5 lbs/person)

So, China's on a growth curve- so is India (who seems to be managing the growth better), but how do we explain such a huge footprint increase in the United States, especially with the offshoring of manufacturing in the US? It's not like we all started driving cars or just got refrigerators.

What happened? It has to be more vehicle driver miles and/or less efficient cars. Adding 20% vehicle miles on a passenger car alone would net you a 4,000 lb increase. Combining trips and alternate transportation seems like a very effective efficient way to reduce GHG's.

Cutting 250 miles/month off your car trips would bring you on an individual basis back to the 1990 Kyoto baseline!