Greenhouse Emissions Drop Less During Economic Downturn Than Expected

An anonymous reader writes with a quick bite from Nature World News: "The contribution of economic decline in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is very low, reveals a new study. Researcher Richard York of the University of Oregon studied data collected between 1960 and 2008 from more than 150 nations in order to analyze the impact of economic decline on greenhouse gas emissions." From the paper: "In Model 2, the percentage of the population living in urban areas and the percentage of GDP from the manufacturing sector were included as control variables. This model has lower data coverage than Model 1 (154 versus 160 nations, and 4,134 versus 5,630 nation-year observations) owing to missing data on the control variables. The coefficients, at 0.752 for growth and 0.346 for decline, are similar to those from Model 1 and, as in Model 1, are both significantly different from 0 and significantly different from each other."

Comments

No surprise

[nomad-9]

This is not really surprising.

Apart from people generally not changing their habits during a recession, there is the fact that the recession itself didn't hit all countries with the same intensity. Some (e.g. China, India and South Korea) are still doing well, and as a consequence, their greenhouse emissions haven''t decreased much.

While the developed countries did diminish their total emissions (e,g, UK, Japan, US, Germany), there is still the fact that the manufacturing sector ha been mostly transferred (outsourced or lost to) to the developing markets.Not surprising that the overall emissions have not dropped, at least in the same proportions that it increased during economic expansion.

150 nations + not all going in the same direction. Do the math.

Re:my guess

[Mr0bvious]

My guess is, that the effects of the recent economic downturn has yet to be realised - it's been kicked down the road by the creation of trillions of dollars and increased debt to offset its effect - it's been absorbed (hidden) by more debt and inflation.

So I think it's a little too early to be making any judgements or conclusions.

my guess is its all to do with beans

[Chrisq]

As people cut back on their budgets they are eating more beans. Beans for lunch, beans for breakfast, and beans for tea. This leads directly to increased methane emissions.

(well its as good as any other theory I've read)

Re:The wealthy don't matter

[bp m_i_k_e]

It's unfortunate that the "they-pay-nothing" argument is made by so many, including a presidential candidate. This statement is false.

Even the bottom 20% pays an average of 17.4% of their income in taxes. It is absurd for anyone to say that some group "pays nothing." It is grossly absurd for a well-educated, former governor and many supposedly informed supporters, including a member of the House Budget Committee, to say "they don't pay anything."

Here is one summary of the overall tax burden as a % of income in 2011:
17.4% - Lowest 20% (Avg cash income: $13,000)
21.2% - Second 20% ($26,100)
25.2% - Third 20% ($42,000)
28.3% - Fourth 20% ($68,700)
29.5% - Next 10% ($105,000)
20.3% - Next 5% ($147,000)
30.4% - Next 4% ($254,000)
29.0% - Top 1% ($1,371,000)

Source (pdf): http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf