135 Million Tons of CO2 Saved - And Counting
by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden 
on 04.22.08
Red dots denote large-scaled CDM projects, orange are medium-sized, yellow small
The UN's Kyoto Protocol is sometimes considered a bust because it doesn't include the US, yet recent statistics from Det Norske Veritas, the certifying agency of Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in the developing world, are heartening Earth Day news. Thus far 1,000 projects in 49 countries have "saved" carbon dioxide emissions of 135 million tons, and are expected to "save" a total of 1.2 billion tons of CO2 by the end of 2012, when Kyoto's first mandate period ends. For comparison, Norway emits about 54 million tons annually.
There are another 2,000 CDM projects in the pipeline, and if all these manage to get verified, the UN estimates 2.7 billion tons of CO2 will be saved. That's the good news. The bad news is as a global village we emit more than 8 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuel burning annually, and some scientists say we've got to get to near zero man-made emissions to stabilize a cooler climate. Via ::UNFCC
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