Just in time for the Olympics: China now world's largest polluter
American polluters are hanging their heads in shame today at the news that China has probably already overtaken the US as the world's premier emitter of greenhouse gases.
A research team from the University of California reports that while the US can still take pride in being a bigger per capita polluter (USA!USA!USA!), Chinese emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have been underestimated, and probably surpassed those of the US sometime in 2006 or 2007.
There's really no positive spin to this story, but there is a whole bunch of interesting downside.
Firstly, since we've been wrong about Chinese pollution all along, that means that projected outputs used in climate change models are also low, and the real numbers will also be much greater than anticipated. Secondly, the Chinese government has been fairly blunt in the past about the fact that economic growth will take priority over reducing greenhouse gases, so don't look for any change from that direction. Thirdly, the Chinese economy is expected to grow at a superheated, coal-powered 10% this year, which is good news if you own a factory in Shenzen, but bad news for a whole lot of other folks on the planet.
But wait, here's the best part. The scientists project that the growth in China's greenhouse gas emissions over the next decades will be "several times larger than the cuts in emissions being made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol." If rich nations were even cutting emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, which so far they're not.
via [BBC News]
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