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China Surpasses U.S. As Climate-Change Culprit #1

NASA’s Map of Carbon Emissions

Dark Red = Highest Intensity

The United States has lost its status as the world’s leading source of carbon emissions.

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement have increased 38% since 1992. But the global geography of carbon emissions has shifted dramatically since then, according to a new report by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. As growth in the use of fossil fuels has slowed in developed countries and accelerated in developing countries, China has replaced the United States as the world’s largest source of carbon emissions. And India isn’t far behind.

“The United States was the largest emitter of CO2 in 1992, followed in order by China, Russia, Japan and India,” said Gregg Marland of ORNL’s Environmental Sciences Division. “The most recent estimates suggest that India passed Japan in 2002, China became the largest emitter in 2006, and India is poised to pass Russia to become the third largest emitter, probably this year.”

In the Kyoto Protocol, 38 developed countries initially agreed to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases in an effort to minimize their potential impact on the Earth’s climate system. When the Kyoto Protocol was drafted in 1997, those 38 countries were responsible for only 57% of carbon emissions.

The recent emissions estimates show that by the time the Kyoto Protocol came into force in 2005 those 38 countries were the source of less than half of the national total of emissions. In other words, more than half of global emissions are now created in “developing countries.”

The study stresses that these emissions numbers are subject to some uncertainty – about 5% for the United States but possibly as much as 20 percent for China.

“These are our best estimates, but precise numbers cannot be known with certainty,” Marland said. “Also, as countries with less certain data become more important to the overall CO2 picture, the estimates of the global total of emissions become less certain.”

While this national distribution of emissions is significant in the context of international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, its practical significance is less clear in a world linked by international commerce, co-author Jay Gregg of the University of Maryland noted. A recent study has estimated, for example, that a third of CO2 emissions from China in 2005 were due to production of goods for export. Current estimates of national CO2 emissions show simply the amount of CO2 emitted from within a country and do not take into consideration the impact of international trade in goods and services or the energy used in international travel and transport.

Burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement – along with deforestation - are the chief human-related sources of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.