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.