CO2 emission to atmosphere and biological scaling laws

Abstract

The increase of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by the different countries gives rise to one of the most serious environmental problems of our time: global warming.Based on scaling laws, we estimated carbon dioxide emissions to atmosphere of 13 nations in terms of each country’s body mass. A comparison with empirical data for 2002 suggests that only one country follows the scaling law (optimal behaviour). Moreover, our results highlight that calls for nations to reduce the same percentage of their CO2 emissions does not accurately reflect real and immediate needs of global environmental protection. We also present some possible guidelines to establish CO2 emissions into the countries analyzed.