The UN Climate Change Report 2007 at a Glance

Reasons for Global Warming (7/10)

A comparison of economic development, population growth and energy usage helps understand the reasons of global warming. The recent increase in CO2 emissions was fuelled more by economic growth than growing populations. It is not the poor masses, but the new and old rich that fuel global warming. And while energy and emission intensity have steadily decreased since the oil crisis in the 1970s, carbon intensity has not. One conclusion could be that fixing prices for greenhouse gas emissions can help achieve emissions reduction, just like rising oil prices helped reduce energy and emissions intensity in the last decades (Graphic: IPCC).