Feburay 29 2008

CURRENT EVENT





The CO2 State



WHO:




WHAT:If Texas were its own country, it would be the 48th most populous in the world, right between North Korea and Ghana. In terms of landmass, at 268,000 square miles it would be the 40th-biggest. But when it comes to environmental impact, Texas is on par with some of the largest, most industrialized nations on the planet.


WHEN:Were the Lonestar State to secede from the union it would be the world's eighth-largest emitter of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, just behind Canada, with 630 million metric tons spewed into the atmosphere in 2005, according to new figures released this week by the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration. That's actually a reduction of 40 million metric tons since 2003, when Texas was the globe's seventh-largest CO2 contributor. But even though the state is improving, Texas still outpaces the combined emissions of California and Pennsylvania, the states with the second- and third-highest CO2 outputs.




WHERE: Texas


But it's not just industry and agriculture that give Texas such an outsize carbon footprint. Texans epitomize America's penchant for overconsumption, so much so that they've even coined their own phrase for superlarge portions: Texas-sized. The state's 23.5 million residents use nearly 3,000 more kilowatt-hours of electricity every year than the average American and a higher percentage of them drive large, gas-guzzling vehicles
HOW: