CHINA:For a long time it's been a question of when China would become the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, rather than if, but the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday it believed China would overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) either this year or next.
With a new coal-fired power plant opening every four days in China, and on a day when smog drastically reduced visibility in Beijing, the IEA estimate is hardly a big surprise.
It confirms previous estimates that China would overtake the US in production of heat-trapping carbon dioxide at some point before 2010, based on current growth levels.
China's response to criticism of worsening emissions of greenhouse gases has long been to turn on the developed world and say: "It's our turn to enjoy economic growth".
Beijing says the developed nations have no right to criticise, and argued that the country's lower levels per capita should make it a special case. It says it will not impose caps on carbon dioxide emissions until the Chinese economy has stabilised at a higher level. That means a point at which average Chinese incomes exceed those in the US, expected sometime around 2050.
China has honourable intentions of nearly halving the amount of greenhouse gases it emits for every US dollar of its economy by 2020, but authorities strongly reject the idea of strict capping.
According to United Nations data, US individual greenhouse gas production comes out at 20 tonnes per person per year, compared to 3.2 tonnes per person in China each year. The world average is 3.7 tonnes.
Premier Wen Jiabao has made some very high-profile pronouncements on the need to tackle global warming, but details on what China plans to do are scant.
Economic growth is the central plank of government policy and while there are pronouncements about the need to reduce China's carbon footprint, there are few moves to reduce the growing number of cars on the streets, or to trim the number of coal-fired power plants which provide the lion's share of China's energy needs.
Beijing is coming in for greater international pressure to cut its carbon emissions, particularly with talks looming to extend the UN's Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012.
The US, which abandoned Kyoto in 2001, says it will not rejoin the pact unless China and India are also subject to its rules.