The Bush administration has taken a lot of flack over its opposition to the Kyoto climate protocols. Although many people (including myself) suspect that the real reason for the opposition is that big business doesn’t want to the extra economic burden, the official reason for the opposition is that it’s a bad protocol since it doesn’t impose limits on the developing world, including China.
If that were the real reason for the administration’s opposition, they’d have a point.
From today’s New York Times:
China will surpass the United States in 2009, nearly a decade ahead of previous predictions, as the biggest emitter of the main gas linked to global warming, the International Energy Agency has concluded in a report to be released Tuesday.
China’s rise, fueled heavily by coal, is particularly troubling to climate scientists because as a developing country, China is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol’s requirements for reductions in emissions of global warming gases. Unregulated emissions from China, India and other developing countries are likely to account for most of the global increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the next quarter-century.
One would hope that China’s rate of growth of pollution would be slowed somewhat in the next couple of years, due to promises given to the International Olympics Committee about having clean air for the Beijing Olympics.
However, while CO2 emissions is not a category in which the U.S. should be proud to be number one, I’m not sure that our falling out of the top spot because of someone else getting worse is that great of news.