Investigating the Impact of OECD and EU Membership on CO2 Emissions

In recent times global climate change has become a major issue for most countries as its effect is felt in our world today, ranging from increased rainfall and increased drought in some areas, to increasing temperatures, melting glaciers and rising sea levels in many areas of the world as stated by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2007. This paper looks at the factors that can influence the level of carbon emissions in a country. Does this vary from one country to another? Are there conditions that must be in place for your carbon emissions to rise or fall? These questions require that we have an understanding of the variables or quantities that drive the level of carbon for a country. As such, an econometric approach is used to model carbon emissions as a function of several economic activities and policy variables to determine which is significant in the fight to reduce our carbon footprint