| From The Newspaper (14) Environment (4) |
December 22, 2022
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| He thought that lowering the temperature in order to reduce CO2 to the original point of 150 years ago was not such a difficult thing. The way to lower the temperature is by reducing the consumption of energy. Consuming energy is done only by human beings. Consuming energy is done in various ways such as transportation (cars, taxies, tracks, buses, trains, ships, planes, etc.), accommodation (houses, offices, factories, warehouses, schools, museums, libraries, theaters, churches, hotels, shops, restaurants, bars, etc.), food production/ farming (grains, vegetables, meats, fish, flowers, processed foods, etc.), production of products and buildings (vehicles, buildings, clothing, furniture, utensils, tools, electric appliances, etc.), mining & materials (gold, silver, copper, coal, cement, plastic, etc.), medicine and science (experiments, drugs, etc.), services (beauty, education, sports, hobbies, entertainments, publishing, lifelines, roads, bridges, ports, zoos, parks, amusement parks, ski resorts, golf clubs, hot springs, etc.), war & defense (weapons, soldiers, facilities, etc.). Those synergies are all for keeping the life and lifestyle of human beings. If human beings give up some of the services they receive, consumption of energy (= emission of CO2) would decline. But, of course, the problem is, who should give up and what should be given up? In 2020 and 2021 because of COVID-19, energy consumption in the world decreased  by an ideal amount. If this pace is continued, the CO2 problem and global warming would be solved. So, the point is whether people can think about the present CO2 situation as seriously as COVID-19. Recently, the annual emission of CO2 in Japan is 1.04 billion tons. This consists of the following: Industry & Agriculture : 48.6%, Transportation :17.7%, Services : 17.4%, and Households : 15.9%. You might think 'Households' is just about 16%. You might think that the term 'Households' includes households using electricity, gas, water, food, wastes they emit, their cars' gasoline, even their house's demolishing energy. However, this 16% doesn't include the energy of a delivery from Amazon, the delivery of the daily newspaper, or going to a beauty salon and/or other facilities like a gym, as well as maintaining one's energy. It doesn't include your job place that gives one a salary which one needs. The amount of energy consumption of course depends on each country's industrial situation, and its people's lifestyle. He checked on the internet and found a website which introduced all 197 countries' CO2 emissions. <Top 20 CO2 emitting countries (From the top 1)> China, USA, India, Russia, Japan, Iran, Germany, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, Australia, England, Italy, Poland, and Taiwan. But this might not be fair because they have different populations. <Top 20 CO2 per a person emitting countries (From the top 1)> Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago, Kuwait, Brunei, Aruba, Luxembourg, Oman, UAE, Bahrain, USA, Saudi Arabia, Australia, New Caledonia, Kazakhstan, Canada, Faroe Islands, Estonia, Russia, Norway, Finland. Maybe this type of comparison causes those countries' people's hostility. They have their reasons, like living in a cold area and needing energy to warm up. But, at the same time, there are some countries like Lesotho, the country with the least CO2 emissions, both as a country and per person. Lesotho's population is 2,074,465, its land is 30,355 km2, and CO2 emission per a person is 0.009 tons, while Qatar's is 40.310 tons. Lesotho's total annual emission of CO2 is 18,000 tons while Qatar emits 70,531,000 tons a year. Qatar's population is 2,168,673 and land is 11,586 km2. He did some calculations: More than 5 tons emission of CO2 a year per a person : 69 countries (35.0%) (More than 10 tons : 27 countries (13.7%)) Less than 5 tones : 128 countries (65.0%) (Less than 1 ton : 64 countries (32.5%)) How about the countries in the middle? The 98th country's CO2 emission per person is 2.657 tons. Maybe the differences between the spectrum of countries are too big to ignore. |
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No. 501
*synergy :相乗作用、協同作用
*demolish :解体する
*spectrum :範囲