Oriental output overtaking others...

No great surprise here but noteworthy all the same. "China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show." says the article in the Guardian [Link] . Only two years ago China's emissions were 2% below those of the USA and of course per capita China's pollution remains quite low but of course that isn't the point. Also these figures only include CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement production; this last point seems strange but China now produces 44% of global cement production...and they don't export much!!

The figures also do not include sources of other greenhouse gases (methane from agriculture/ nitrous oxide from industrial processes...) they also do not include other sources of carbon dioxide (aviation/shipping/ deforestation...) Dr Olivier, a senior scientist at the Netherlands government Environmental Assessment Agency that compiled the figures, said that even including all other CO2/greenhouse emissions China would still have the highest output.

"Since China passed the US by 8% [in 2006] it will be pretty hard to compensate for that with other sources of emissions."

...and an interesting final comment from the Guardian writers John Vidal and David Adam:

Chinese industries have been hesitant to embrace unproven clean coal and carbon capture technologies that are still in their infancy in developed countries.

All this comes as a complete non-surprise but I doubt this will stop the Bush/US bashers and their 'he/they didn't sign the Kyoto agreement' rants: before you shout at me I do realise that just not being the worst doesn't make the USA saints in this respect but it just irritates me greatly that the likes of China, along with Russia (another great polluter) are effectively let off the hook and many countries that did sign barely pay lip service to genuine reduction in emissions - and at the same time don't fail to wallow in their own feel-good platitudes whilst firing sanctimonious broadsides at the USA and in particular the Bush administration.