Bad news out of Canada, according to Greenwire. It seems that not only have the Chinese overtaken the U.S. as the largest overall emitter of carbon dioxide, but our wretchedly excessive per capita emissions also have fallen behind other kinder, gentler nations.

China of course is and says it will remain exempt from the Kyoto scheme, much like other top and rapidly growing emitters India, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico among 150 others.

Now, it turns out, those nice, polite neighbors to the north are larger per-capita emitters than Americans are. I wonder if they know that they can't just go around setting their thermostats where they want and driving the vehicle of their choice, and think other countries are going to just accept that.

This can't be good for the global warming industry, predicated on decrying America's rogue, outlier status as a means to shame us into accepting onerous economic restrictions — binding upon us, thanks to our judicial system, while largely ceremonial for those few other countries purporting to also accept those restrictions.

As I've said before, beginning next January, the press will no doubt begin noting that the U.S. did sign Kyoto (under Clinton, not that mean George Bush) but that the Senate chose not to ratify it. And, of course, U.S. emissions have been rising at a fraction of the pace of Europe's, despite our economy and population having grown faster then those of our EU counterparts. Given these two bits of information, a "hard cap" rationing scheme such as Kyoto — which restricts only those countries whose emissions aren't rising as fast as the developing world's — may not necessarily be the only way to go.

That will be the story come January. Then again, McCain could still win the election.   Source

Average user rating