2023-05-08 07:30:04
“Hello, I like your podcasts, but I don’t understand why we focus so much on what France can do when, as we often say, it has very little impact on climate change, 1%, even less, if I understood correctly. Can you respond to this point? » (A question posed by Edgar at [email protected].)
My answer : To say that France emits only 1% of greenhouse gas emissions is false, factually and historically. Firstly because we have to count our carbon footprint, that is to say the emissions of imported products. But also because we must not forget that France is historically a major emitter, and that CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. We therefore have a great responsibility in the current warming through our emissions over the past hundred and fifty years.
1/ What is France’s contribution to global warming?
France emits in the strict sense 0.9% of CO2 on a global scale – it is the twentieth world polluter, all the same – but this figure hides several dimensions. First, the warming is not only caused by CO2, but also by other gases (such as methane, for example). Above all, it is absurd not to take into account all the greenhouse gas emissions for which we are responsible: we import a lot of products manufactured abroad, and we must therefore add this carbon footprint to ours. France is then closer to 2%.
It is then necessary to compare with the emissions of greenhouse gases per inhabitant, China or the United States being much more populated than France. A French person emits an average of 9 tonnes of CO2 per year (we talked about this average and what it covers in this episode of the podcast with Lucas Chancel), which is much more than the world average, which is around 6 tons per inhabitant. You can read more in this article by my colleague Audrey Garric.
And listen to the podcast here:
2/Why are these figures in cardboard?
If I am completely honest with you, this accounting is a bit bogus, as Alain Souchon would say. For what ? Because of the way global warming works: greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for very long periods of time. This means that the CO2 that is causing climate change today is the result of greenhouse gas emissions over the past two hundred years, since the start of the industrial revolution.
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