Pollution that has accompanied China's rapid economic growth has put the Asian giant in second place in world pollution after the US, according to a report released over the weekend.
The report, combined with continued rejection by the US of joining the Kyoto Convention on global warming, prompted Karl-Heinz Florenz, the head of the environmental commission of the European Parliament, to warn of an ever more likely climate catastrophe.
The report on China, released over the weekend at the 10th UN meeting on climate change, showed that emissions have increased in China from 2.67 billion tonnes in 1994 to 4.08 billion tonnes in 2002, according to information from China and the International Energy Agency in Paris.
The 2002 China figures represented 3.2 tonnes per person. The figure for the US is 19.4 tonnes per person and for Germany, 10.2 tonnes. The report was the first official report submitted by China under the requirements of the Kyoto Convention on global warming.
Under the convention, developing countries are not obligated to reduce greenhouse gasses. Brazil also presented its first report, which showed the destruction of rain forests is the major culprit in its increased emissions of dangerous gasses.
"If we don't agree in Buenos Aires on making rapid progress and bringing in the United States, China and India, it could be that my grandchildren in Cologne will be looking at the North Sea across the mouth of the Rhine," Florenz said in a published statement on Sunday.
He called for the global reduction of carbon dioxide, and for Germany to take a leading role on the issue.
"We have the highest carbon dioxide emissions in Europe and wrote the original emission trade laws," he said.
Germany has actually seen a reduction in emissions over past years.
The report said that the largest sources of Chinese emissions was the burning of fossil fuels, above all coal, the mining industry and the production of energy.
Experts said it was absolutely urgent for China to give priority to environmentally friendly technology in the billions of dollars of investments flowing into the country.
Germany's Environmental Minister Juergen Trittin plans to call today for both Beijing and Washington to accept the upper limits of emissions.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS