The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide has jumped by a record amount, according to the US department of energy, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
“The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly, the co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
The world pumped about 564m more tons (512m metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of 6 per cent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries, China, the US and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.
Extra pollution in China and the US account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Gregg Marland, a professor of geology, said.
Countries squabble over UN green fund
Countries are still squabbling over how much power a United Nations fund will have to help developing countries tackle climate change, just weeks ahead of a crunch summit in South Africa to work on a global climate deal, an EU negotiator said.
Last year, countries agreed to create the
“Green Climate Fund” to channel up to $100 billion (62 billion pounds) a year by 2020 to help developing countries fight climate change.
The US and Saudi Arabia have raised some objections to aspects of the fund’s design, Laurence Graff, head of the international and inter-institutional relations unit at the EU Commission, told reporters.
“The nature of these objections - whether they are serious concerns - remains to be seen,” Graff said.
The United States and some other nations want the World Bank to have a central role in managing the fund but some developing countries and environmentalists are against, arguing that it does not have the right environmental credentials.
