China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.
China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

And perhaps you should check out U.S. GHG emission reductions compared to EU GHG emission increases.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

Yeah you jerks!

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

China's emissions are a quarter of that of the US, per capita.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

I don't know anything about this sort of thing. Has China overtaken them because the U.S. has cut back their own emissions or is it just that China is producing more and more?

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

According to the article i was reading on the BBC:

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

Hurray, The US is only second worst in something!

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

From what I've seen, it's due to milder weather requiring less use of air conditioning units, so the figures aren't exactly reliable.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

Also factories in America are shutting down (reducing CO2 emissions) and moving away to other countries (like China - increasing their CO2 emissions) to make the stuff they make. The stuff that the factories make that stuff still ends up in American possession so it's not so much a reduction of American carbon footprint as an off-shoring of it. Yanks are still "responsible" for that carbon (kind of).

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

That quote is not accurate. It should end.. compared with a 1.4% fall in CO2 emissions in the US.

And Iceland has higher per capita GHG emissions than the United States.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

[quote=Texan]
Link please. I just had a brief look and I find this and this which would disagree with you.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

[quote=JonnyBGood]Can't find the original citation right now, but this info from 2006 shows that wiki's numbers are way off on Iceland.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

charming of you to post - do you get credit (and of course by 'credit' i mean - it is your job after all to spout such bollocks; but are you allowed to count lying to us? after all we don't believe you) for spreading such nonsense to such a small and propaganda immune group?

china has not over taken the us.

it might do so.

in 20 years

if todays predictions are correct

little reason either way for the us to be as shit as it is on emissions rates

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

Those numbers are still only half of the USA's, for anyone not bothered opening links wikipedia gave 7.2 metric tonnes per capita in 2003, texan's link 10.7 in 2004 (not 2006).

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

This seems like a pretty good site for comparisons.

You're right, the BBC have misquoted the BP figures that the Netherlands Environment Agency report used. They also state the EU figure has remained somewhat constant.

There's a nice little .xls download on that page of the figures they've used, too.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

A quick glance at most of the literature in this field would show that quite understandably a lot of this is little more than educated guessing (for a great treatment in bizarro economics, try the recent government consultation document on the UK's Carbon Emission Reduction Target). But even allowing for that I would expect China to eventually produce more than the US - they have vastly more people for a start. Additionally, the US is less reliant on "dirtier" industries and has the capital/tech to import/utilise cleaner fuels.

Of course, I'm not sure what relavence all this has though. If we believe that carbon emissions are "a bad thing" (in the sense of contributing to climate change) then I'm not sure why being 1st, 2nd or 185th largest polluter would make you feel better vis-a-vis whatever you're doing to continue/stop the problem. If the whole thing is a scam invented by hippies and we'll all eat oranges grown in Siberia and Alaska and anyway some sort of technology will save the day at the last minute then who cares what anyone's carbon emissions are?

Incidentally, I'm engaged in a vaguely ridiculous exercise of calculating my companies own carbon footprint at the moment. To do my bit I shall be making ab official recommendation that we do lots more homeworking with incentives for those officers who spend most of their workdays in bed. Bonuses should be awarded for those who can subsist longest purely on crisps.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

I was in bejiing last summer and my guess would be from what i experienced. First day we arrive at the airport and get a cab. Went around bejiing to get the fastest way to mid city(our apartment). After 1½ hour we finally get there, after seeing all from new eviromental cars used by wealthier and rich ppl to old farming trucks and 1 billion scooters (:D) used by construction/roadworkers/poor ppl. First the cab driver pulled down the window to get a smoke and i though thank god! But then i breath the "fresh air". Very heavy smog filled air. Took me like a day to get used to. My meaning is that in china the technology to prevent these things are there. but 99% of the ppl living there can't afford the things that is good for our enviroment, so they use old out-dated and polluting cars, machines and factories which they inharieted from the west.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

what is it with the recent "but they did it too" style justification coming from america these days?

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

The point is that the biggest polluters over the next 50-100 years or so are likely to be non-Western countries, so while adopting envioronmentalist policies here may well have some impact on reducing middle-class guilt, its going to have no real effect on world pollution.

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

Meh, we should adopt a lot of "environmental" policies to cut energy consumption anyway, ignoring the climate stuff. Yeah I'm sure cold fusion will save the day and all that, but in the meantime, why should we be so keen to give money to the Arabs? :confused:

Re: China overtakes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter
 

wrong