The relationship between greenhouses gas emisions and economic growth: possible causes of environmental Kuznets curve patterns

Abstract

Environmental degradation and, particularly, the climate change have been analysed by many scientists and politicians from various perspectives. At the political level, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in 1992, in order to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions at the level, which could help to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. In today’s world, climate change, assumed to be caused by human activities (the so-called anthropogenic effects), is widely discussed and considered to be a major threat to the environment. Over the period of about 150 years (beginning with the industrial revolution), great amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases, producing the so-called greenhouse effect, were released into the atmosphere. Based on the assumption that the harmful effects produced by human activities cause climate change, researchers are trying to find the methods and ways of interrupting this causal relationship between human activities and climate.