July 28, 2011
   « Another key Dem uninterested in being Obama's VP | Blog Home Page | Expect a flood of similar images of Obama (updated) »
Email Friend | Print Article | | Share Share

June 15, 2008

Congrats to China: New #1 Emitter of Greenhouse Gasses

Rick Moran
What's remarkable isn't that China is now the world's #1 producer of greenhouse gasses. The truly unbelievable thing is that Al Gore and his minions criticized the United States severely for not signing the Kyoto agreement.

Of course, they never got around to mentioning that Kyoto never included China or India in its strictures. In short, the world's #1 polluter would have been free to release as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere with as much speed as they could muster - something they evidently did spectacularly well:

China has now clearly overtaken the United States as the world's leading emitter of climate-warming gases, a new study has found. The increasing emissions from China - up 8 percent 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 percent 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.


Thanks to their heavy reliance on dirty, unscrubbed coal to generate electricity, Chinese cities are becoming unlivable due to smog and pollution.

But according to Al Gore, it is the US who should have ruined its economy by trying to cut its emissions to 1993 levels as the Kyoto agreement called for.

In an interview for the History Channel program "Earth at Risk," Gore says  with a straight face in answer to a question about Chinese immunity from Kyoto  that the US should adopt the Kyoto protocols even if China doesn't participate "to set a good example" to the Chinese. This, Gore believes, would have so moved the Chinese that they would voluntarily cut their own emissions.

And this guy would have been president on 9/11.

No one - including John McCain - mentions that we have already cut our own emissions faster than Europe or that China should now be the biggest target for climate change advocates because they emit more greenhouse gasses than anyone else.

Instead, it is America that is continuously harrassed over its policies. Someone in the global warming camp should get a grip and face reality; it ain't us you should be going after.

Posted at 1:42 PM | Email | | | Share Share
2photo.JPG