The Dutch government-sponsored agency was the first to report that China had overtaken the United States as the world’s largest carbon polluter in 2006. Its evaluations are based on energy data from the oil company BP, the International Energy Agency, and the figures from cement, steel, and other industries collected by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center.
Emissions shrank in the leading industrial countries by 7 percent, or 800 million tons, last year, but that was compensated by a 9 percent increase in China and 6 percent in India, said the report, issued annually.
China has more than doubled its emissions since 2000 to reach 8.1 billion tons, even though for the past five years it has annually doubled its capacity of wind and solar energy.
India’s emissions have grown 50 percent since 2000, and it has now surpassed Russia as the world’s fifth-largest carbon polluter, said the report.
Measured by country, China remains the largest polluter, but the United States emits nearly three times more per person, it said. The report comes as 194 countries try to reach an accord to control the gases scientists say are raising the Earth’s average temperatures. That rise, if unchecked, could lead to catastrophic water shortages, rising seas and coastal flooding, and more severe drought in arid zones.
A summit of about 120 world leaders in Copenhagen last December failed to agree on an effective remedy, and negotiators have lowered their ambitions for the next major climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of this year.
