Fossil-Fuel CO₂ Emissions from North America

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What countries constitute North America?

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North America, as defined here, consists of the United States and Canada. North America is now the second highest fossil-fuel, CO₂ emitting region of the world behind Centrally Planned Asia with 1.72 billion tons of carbon in 2006. This 2006 total for North America represents a 1.6% decrease from the all-time high in 2005 (1.75 billion tons of carbon). Because ~90% of current fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions from the region are from the United States, the time series for North America closely resembles that for the United States. In addition, the patterns of change for the two countries have been similar in gross features, although they differ in detail because of political and resource differences. In contrast with CO₂ emissions from other regions, the striking features are a relatively uniform growth rate from 1950 to 1973 (2.8% per year), an essentially constant rate of emissions from 1973 to 1987, growth during the 1990s and 2000s leading to a record high in 2005. Because of more rapid growth elsewhere, particularly Asia, emissions from North America have shrunk from 46.4% of the global total in 1950 to 21.9% in 2006. Per capita regional emissions have been consistently high and well above those for any other region.