Don't forget that we all wish that we were attending this week's global warming conference. Here is something ($) we could be talking about after the plenary session and/or as we're browsing the trade show:
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.
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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.
The agency’s prediction highlights the unexpected speed with which China is emerging as the biggest contributor to global warming. Still, China has resisted limits on its own emissions and those of other developing countries.
Up until now, Chinese officials have instead called repeatedly for even tighter limits on the industrialized countries’ emissions of global warming gases after the Kyoto Protocol’s limits expire at the end of 2012. China says rich countries bear responsibility for the increase in global carbon dioxide levels that has already taken place.
Moreover, the biggest current emitter of the gases, the United States, has rejected the protocol in part because most lawmakers and President Bush say its exemption for rising powers like China is unfair.
Unfair, like that time when my grad school roommate ("Dusty Dave") dumped his dirty dishes into the sink that was already spilling over with dirty dishes. I said: "hey, no fair, clean that up!" He said: "hey, you should know what's not fair, you put the big pile of dirty dishes in the sink in the first place." I said: "OK, let's use paper plates for a while and clean those dishes up later." He said: "Right on."
I made that story up to illustrate how China and the U.S. are kindof like two twentysomethings living together because their incomes are grad school stipends (about $6000 in late 1980s dollars) and fouling up the common areas. The true part is that my grad school roomate was named "Dusty Dave." My joke was, that when he took a shower, he got muddy. Humor.
