The famous Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015 within the framework of COP21, set the objective of preventing the increase in the global average temperature of the planet from exceeding 2 ° C with respect to pre-industrial levels and also sought to promote additional efforts that avoid exceeding the 1.5 ° C barrier.
More than five years later, meeting this goal still seems a long way off or even impossible to achieve. In September 2020, the European Commission proposed raising the greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2030 to at least 55% compared to 1990 (the current framework is 40%). This would allow, according to the Commission, to move towards a climate neutral economy and fulfill the commitments of the European Union with the Paris Agreement.
However, and according to data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020 (corresponding to 2019 emissions), the European Union continues to be the third region in the world with the highest volume of emissions. Although tropospheric ozone and microscopic particles are the agents that cause air pollution that are of greatest concern in relation to health, it must be taken into account that the burning of fossil fuels causes both the release of greenhouse gases and of the emission of said particles. Therefore, the list of countries that release the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is also a good indicator of which ones pollute the most.
In this gallery we are going to see which other countries and regions of the world are the ones that emit the most carbon dioxide.
