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Why has the level of CO₂ in our atmosphere increased so quickly in recent years? Where does all that carbon dioxide come from?
The answer is human activity, particularly from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, petroleum (oil), and natural gas. All fossil fuels contain carbon, and when it’s burned, the gas, carbon dioxide (CO₂), is emitted, or released, into the air.
Whenever we hop in a car and heat or cool our homes, we consume fossil fuels. Here’s a table of CO₂ emissions by economic sector with data from 2009. Check out which sectors put out the most CO₂.
Based on the information on the data table, drag and drop each sector to label the bars on the bar graph on the right.