What Are the Sources of Greenhouse Gases?

In the U.S., our greenhouse gas emissions come mostly from energy use. These are driven largely by economic growth, fuel used for electricity generation, and weather patterns affecting heating and cooling needs. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, resulting from petroleum and natural gas, represent 82 percent of total U.S. human-made greenhouse gas emissions.

U.S. Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Gas,
2001 (Million Metric Tons of Carbon Equivalent)

How is the industrialized world responsible for global climate change?

Global warming has increased drastically from all the industrial development activities that have occurred over the past century. Fossil fuels are burned continually while forests are being cut constantly for consumption. Forests absorb carbon. Cars that are driven that's powered by gasoline, the highly processed, packaged, and transported foods, the electricity that is used to power machinery, and millions of other high energy products all use fossil fuel energy or are powered by it. Coal-fired power plants are one the main sources of carbon emissions. Coal mining feeds the power plants. All these activities contribute to global warming. Excessive consumption of fossil fuels and related products especially in the United States and in other developed countries contribute to more emission of greenhouse gases than any other groups in the world. Through excessive consumption, fossil fuel industries continue profiting by exploiting these resources and people while emitting tons of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and increasing global warming. Despite having options to switch to renewable energy that does not hurt the environment as much as fossil fuels, industries continue investing highly into fossil fuel development for easy profit. The U.S. government continues to push forward a fossil-fuel dependent energy policy. Indigenous Peoples locally and globally have said these energy policies are unsustainable and a form of genocide and ethnocide against Indigenous Peoples.

• The mining and burning of coal to produce electricity, which produces SO2 and acid rain, kills the trees from the tops down and contributes to increased global warming.
• The damming of rivers to produce hydroelectric power that destroys and damages large ecosystems, impacting plant, animal, and human life and also contributes to increased CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming