The International Herald Tribune, June 14, 2008
A new study has provided clear evidence that China has now overtaken the United States as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases. The increasing emissions from China - up 8% in the past year - accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2007, the study found. The report, released Friday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, is an annual study. Last year, for the first time, the researchers found that China had edged ahead of the United States as the world's leading emitter.
But the results were not so clear-cut as those released Friday, and many experts were skeptical of last year's finding. The International Energy Agency continued to say only that China was projected to overtake the United States by the end of 2007. ''The difference had grown to a 14% difference, and that's indeed quite large,'' said Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the Dutch agency. ''It's now so large that it's quite a robust conclusion.'' Worse, China's emissions are likely to continue growing substantially for years to come because they are tied to the country's strong economic growth and its particular mix of industry and power sources, the researchers said.
China, like the United States, is heavily dependent on coal for its energy, and it has seen its most rapid growth in some of the world's most polluting industrial sectors, like cement, aluminum and plate glass. Twenty percent of China's emissions come from its cement kilns, which are essential for the country's construction boom and likely to be working overtime this year as the country prepares for the Olympics and rebuilds after a devastating earthquake. That being said, the United States has clearly maintained its lead in carbon dioxide emissions per person. The average American is responsible for 19.4 tons, followed by Russia at 11.8 tons, Western Europe at 8.6 tons, China at 5.1 tons and India at 1.8 tons.
Experts said the new data underscored the importance of getting China to sign on to any new global climate agreement. Neither China nor the United States participated in the current treaty to limit emissions, the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. It will be replaced by a new agreement to be signed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. In Bonn on Friday, 2,000 world leaders concluded two weeks of negotiations on what kind of agreement should replace Kyoto. They claimed modest progress but reached no conclusions, according to The Associated Press, which quoted participants as saying not enough ideas were put on the table. United Nations leaders told them to ''pick up the pace.'' ''With a little more than a year to go to Copenhagen, the challenge to come to that agreement remains daunting,'' said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Full Article:
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
china #1 Polluter!
. Somehow they now manage to by-pass the registration security features like the distorted characters that we are asked to insert. 
. I suppose that trend of spam-bots is in some ways related to both “outsourcing” and “pollution” – the people offering the dubious products and services often seem to be from countries other than the spammers' IP addresses, and further to this, the multiple posting (by the spam-bots) of meaningless and irrelevant threads and replies on other people’s legitimate boards can probably be considered as pollution of forums!!!
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