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Rich Nations' Greenhouse
Gases Up, Despite Kyoto
OSLO - Industrialised nations'
emissions of greenhouse gases edged up to the highest level in more than a
decade in 2004 despite curbs meant to fight global warming, data compiled
by Reuters showed on Thursday.
The figures, based on national
submissions to the UN Climate Secretariat in Bonn, indicate many countries
will have to do more to meet 2012 goals set by the UN's Kyoto Protocol for
cutting emissions of gases from fossil fuels.
Emissions from 40 industrial
nations climbed 1.6 percent overall to 17.8 billion tonnes of carbon
dioxide -- mainly from power plants, factories and cars -- in 2004 from in
2003 even though oil prices were surging.
"We're not on track to solve
climate change by any stretch of the imagination," said Alex Haxeltine, an
expert at the University of East Anglia in England. Governments were doing
little to plan for cuts in emissions beyond Kyoto, he added.
Most of the 2004 rise was caused
by a 1.7 percent gain in emissions in the United States, the world's
biggest source of greenhouse gases, to a record 7.07 billion tonnes.
Emissions in the European Union and Canada also rose while Japan's dipped.
Most industrialised nations except
the United States and Australia have ratified Kyoto, which obliges an
overall cut in emissions of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by
2008-12 with a shift to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.
Kyoto is meant as a tiny first
step by rich nations to slow global warming that many scientists say could
spur more heatwaves, droughts, floods, more powerful storms and swamp
coastal areas by melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.
The 2004 data, most of it
previously published by governments but not yet verified by UN experts,
indicate that emissions are creeping up after a fall since 1990 largely
caused by the collapse of Soviet-era smokestack industries.
Overall emissions were 4.6 percent
below 1990 levels in 2004, according to the data. Last October, the UN
Climate Secretariat had said 2003 emissions were 5.9 percent below 1990.
TURKEY SKEWS
The addition of Turkey, where
emissions are rising fast, to the group of countries submitting figures in
2004 also contributed to push up overall emissions. Even without Turkey,
emissions in 2004 were the highest since the early 1990s.
They were 5.3 percent below 1990
levels in 1992 and 4.0 percent below in 1991. Emissions sank to almost 8
percent below 1990 levels in the mid-1990s, making some nations wrongly
believe Kyoto was easily within reach.
And the overall figures are almost
certainly underestimates because Russia has not reported emissions since
1999. Since then the UN Climate Secretariat has simply rolled over the
1999 data, when Russia's emissions were 39 percent below 1990 levels.
"I think there has been an
increase again in Russia because of strong economic growth," said Arild
Moe, an expert on Russia and climate change at the Fridtjof Nansen
Institute in Oslo.
And the data do not include
emissions in the Third World -- not covered by Kyoto. Fast-growing China
and India were the world's second and fifth biggest sources of greenhouse
gases in 2000, according to UN data.
US President George W. Bush pulled
out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing that it would harm the US economy and
wrongly excluded developing nations from targets to 2012. His goal is to
restrain the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.
Source: Reuters News Service 2006
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