World growth spurs faster climate change: report*

By Michael Perry
Reuters
Tuesday, May 22, 2007; 1:48 AM

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Global warming is occurring faster than predicted
because rapid economic growth has resulted in higher than expected
greenhouse gas emissions since 2000, said an Australian report on Tuesday.

Emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased about 3 percent a
year since 2000, up from 1 percent a year during the 1990s, said
Australia's peak scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).

"A major driver of the accelerating growth rate in emissions is that,
globally, we're burning more carbon per dollar of wealth created," CSIRO
scientist Mike Raupach said in a statement.

"It means that climate change is occurring faster than has been
predicted by most of the studies done through the 1990s and into the
early 2000s," he said.

Raupach led an international team of carbon-cycle experts, emissions
experts and economists, brought together by the CSIRO's Global Carbon
Project, to quantify global carbon emissions and demand for fossil fuels.

The report found nearly 8 billion metric tons of carbon were emitted
globally into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in 2005, compared with
just 6 billion metric tons in 1995.

"As countries undergo industrial development, they move through a period
of intensive, and often inefficient, use of fossil fuel," said Raupach.

"Efficiencies improve along this development trajectory, but eventually
tend to level off. Industrialized countries such as Australia and the
U.S. are at the leveling-off stage, while developing countries such as
China are at the intensive development stage."

Since the start of the industrial revolution, the United States and
Europe account for more than 50 percent of global emissions over two
centuries, while China accounts for less than 8 per cent, said the CSIRO
report.

The 50 least-developed nations contributed less than 0.5 percent of
global emissions over 200 years, it said.

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On average, each person in Australia and the United States now emits
more than 5 tons of carbon per year, while in China the figure is 1 ton
per year, said the report.

"In addition to reinforcing the urgency of the need to reduce emissions,
an important outcome of this work is to show that carbon emissions have
history," said Raupach.

"We have to take both present and past emissions trajectories into
account in negotiating global emissions reductions. To be effective,
emissions reductions have to be both workable and equitable," he said.

The CSIRO report found Australia's per capita emissions were amongst the
highest in the world due to a heavy reliance on fossil-fuel generated
electricity and a dependence on cars and trucks for transport.

"That means that we have quite a way to go in terms of reducing our
emissions to bring about CO2 stabilization," said Raupach. "Our own
improvements in the energy efficiency of the economy ... have been not
as rapid as improvements in other developed countries."

Australia, like close ally the United States, refuses to sign the Kyoto
Protocol setting caps on greenhouse gas emissions, and has called for a
global scheme to replace "Old Kyoto."

Both countries say the pact is unworkable because it excludes big
developing nations such as India and China from binding targets during
the treaty's first phase, which ends in 2012. China is the world's
second top emitter of carbon dioxide after the United States.

Negotiations have yet to start in earnest on shaping Kyoto's next phase,
with India and China strongly opposed to binding targets and demanding
rich nations, particularly the United States, commit to deep reductions
in emissions.