Southeastern States Show Big Carbon Footprint, No Climate Action

Kevin Gurney of Purdue and a team of researchers are making a splash with work that makes America's carbon footprint visible. Since the story broke on NYT's Dot Earth under the headline Breath of the Nation - Animated CO2 Map, the research has been attracting widespread attention.

It helps that Gurney and his team, with funding from NASA and DOE, were smart enough to render their findings in a video they posted on YouTube, which You can click here to see.

It's astonishing stuff. You can see what annual US emissions of 15 million tons of CO2 looks like, and where it's mostly coming from. But there is a big surprise. The southeastern states are a far bigger contributor of CO2 emissions than anyone previously realized.

The map reproduced above is an aggregate that shows emissions from major power producers, big industries, autos, residential and commercial buildings, and cement manufacturing. Notice, the southeastern states seamlessly continue the same pattern of dense emissions as the northeastern states.

Now look at this map, which shows climate action at the state level. The states that are colored in are working to reduce emissions in the absence of federal action. Notice which states have yet to get off the dime: southeastern states.

Maybe the YouTube video will get through to state lawmakers that they might just have a problem they need to start taking care of.

One thing's for sure. When a federal law goes into effect, the southeastern states are going to be facing a big carbon footprint that they are going to have to answer for.

Leadership states around the country in other regions are already on the case -- realizing energy savings, preparing their state agencies to be responsive to carbon-related challenges, sending signals to all stakeholders, and positioning their economies for coming opportunities.

It's not that the southeastern states didn't have the chance to act. When the Georgia legislature was considering climate action, denialists from the Cato Institute provided testimony that helped convince lawmakers there to do nothing.

Hmmm. Now that the pictures are up on YouTube, maybe these laggard states might think again about taking action -- if only to get ready for the day when doing nothing will be against the law of the land.

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