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Countries don’t produce carbon dioxide emissions equally. Unfortunately, North Americans are over-achievers when it comes to creating carbon dioxide emissions. One North American emits the same amount as two and a half Europeans, 20 Bangladeshis, or more than 40 sub-Saharan Africans!

Population pressure is a factor, but a growing economy also plays a large role in boosting emissions of fossil fuels. The modern world economy has been hard-wired to use them. Businesses and governments used to think that economic growth depended on using more and more fossil fuels. But then, in the 1970s, when major members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) drastically reduced oil exports for political reasons, oil prices jumped. As a result, governments encouraged people to use less oil — so they drove less, bought fuel-efficient cars, and practiced energy conservation. Industrialized nations took the first, tentative steps in reducing the use of fossil fuels.

But, after the mid-1980s (when oil prices dived), some old addictions took over. In the United States, for instance, the size of the average home (which needs fossil fuels to heat it) has increased by 50 percent since 1970 (though the size of the average family has decreased), and more drivers are using large, fuel-guzzling vehicles, such as SUVs. (You can read about improving home energy use and about more fuel-efficient vehicles in Chapter 18.) Countries such as Iceland and Sweden, however, switched to a renewable energy base and stayed that way.

Historically, the stronger a country’s economy, the more GHGs it produces. The general rule has been that a strengthening economy means a greater consumption of fossil fuels — just look at the rapid growth of the auto industry in China, which promises to surpass the United States in production and sales. Some countries have broken that link. Sweden was the first to prove that it was possible to grow GDP while reducing the reliance on fossil fuels, but others have followed suit.

But even as the economies of developing countries grow, they still emit only a small portion of what people in industrialized countries do, per capita. They have a lot of catching up to do. When we wrote the first draft of this chapter in 2007, the world’s biggest GHG polluter as a whole country was the United States. But, since then, China’s emissions of GHGs have already surpassed the United States’. The total pollution from developing countries is expected to exceed the pollution from the industrialized world by 2030. (We take a look at developing nations in Chapter 12.)

A low-carbon future is essential. The IPCC says countries need to move quickly to clean energy or else the course of the climate emergency will become irreversible. It recommends that governments establish effective policies that support clean energies and wean the world off oil rapidly, cutting emissions by at least half by 2030. We talk more about government solutions in Chapter 10 and explore energy alternatives in Chapter 13.

Some countries show that economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions aren’t necessarily intertwined. By 2009, Sweden had seen 44-percent economic growth while reducing its GHG emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels. Sweden is on track to be carbon-neutral by 2045.