by Jan Ulrich 2010
It can be seen that most of the pollution comes from a handful of industries. (Mouse over the bar graphs to see the amount of pollution for each industry.)
It can be argued that pollution is the result of keeping the economy going. While some heavily polluting industries, do make lots of profit, many pollute heavily without creating more GDP than alternative industries. The following graph shows which industries pollute more given the amount of dollars they generate for the economy. Shown below is the ratio of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions per million 2002 Canadian dollars. These statistics are for 2007.
It can be seen that the most polluting industry, Upstream Mining, generates enough GDP to be near the middle of industries given the ratio of emissions to GDP. However some of the other top five most polluting industries, petroleum refining, iron and steel, and aluminum production, are also in the top five most polluting industries adjusted for GDP. Given that the ratio of pollution per GDP output is so high it does not make much economic or ecological sense to pursue these industries.
This project was entered into the Apps 4 Climate Action competition put on by the province of British Columbia.
by Jan Ulrich 2010