Commentary

The cyclical pattern in the graph below, as Al Gore explained in An Inconvenient Truth, comes from the natural increase and decline each year as the trees absorb CO2 during the spring and summer and then stop absorbing CO2 in Fall and Winter.  The trend is not particularly encouraging.

Here is another look that shows the annual growth rate of the CO2 level rather than the CO2 level itself.  We need this number to be declining and it must eventually be negative because it is not sufficient to just maintain CO2 at current levels. 

The data does not show much improvement yet.  We should not be discouraged, however.  Next year Europe will be working with lower Kyoto Protocol CO2 targets and the US-based voluntary efforts will have more momentum.  Americans, Australians and other countries that are not following Kyoto put roughly $100M into CO2 offsets in 2006 and that number is forecasted to be $200M in 2007.  [Source: State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2007.]