China biggest CO2 emitter. UN IPCC looks other way.

More cognitive dissonance for the Climate Faithful with yet another report that China has already overtaken the US as the largest carbon emitter. US carbon - bad; Chinese CO2 - good, seems to be the order of the day.

The IPCC's words are that the world must cut down on CO2 emissions in order to save the planet. The IPCC's actions, and those of its Big Green followers, are that the Western nations - but especially the US - must slash their economic wrists by implementing socialist policies and reducing individual liberty.

In a report to be published next month in the Journal of Environment Economics and Management, a University of California, Berkeley, research team will say China has overtaken the U.S. as the world's biggest polluter and that current computer models substantially underestimate future emissions growth in China.

I don't trust those models any more than I trust climate models.

The report, based on provincial-level data from the Chinese Environmental Protection Agency, says China probably passed the U.S. in 2006-07. The report also says China's projected emissions growth will be several times larger than the cuts in emissions being made by the major industrial nations under the Kyoto Protocol.

Oops. Quick! What position will we take? Oh, that's right - the West grew their economies and caused the problem in the first place so they have a moral obligation to wear the cost of the clean up. What seems to be missed in that argument is those major developing countries that are excluded from any targets are those that had socialist governments that held back their economic growth massively. The reward for India's and China's economic incompetence, which caused ongoing human misery for billions of people for 50 years, is to be able to belch out as much carbon as they want.

Not known is whether the figures include the 5,500 tons of carbon that ABC News reports the transporting of the Olympic torch for the 2008 Beijing Olympics will put in the atmosphere. The torch is being carried to 23 cities around the globe aboard a fossil-fuel-guzzling Air China A330 jet.

The A330 burns 5.4 gallons of aviation fuel per mile and will use 462,400 gallons for the more than 85,000-mile trip. Each gallon of jet fuel burned generates 23.88 pounds of CO2. To put it in perspective, the A330 carrying the torch will generate the emissions equivalent of 550 SUVs.

This report confirms findings issued last year by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The Dutch agency reported that CO2 emissions in China rose an astounding 9% in 2006, giving that country a great leap forward over the U.S.

The Berkeley researchers say China's emissions are now growing at an annual rate of 11%. In 2006-07, China added 186,000 megawatts of coal-fired electrical generation capacity, equivalent to two United Kingdoms.

These are University of Berkeley researchers - not known for their support of anything American - who are showing that China has got past the US.

China is exempt from Kyoto as a "developing" nation, which is one of the reasons the U.S. Senate once voted 97-0 not to consider the protocol for ratification. China would love to see the U.S. economy handcuffed as it races to make this century a Chinese one.

The European Union actually thought that handcuffing the US would help them and missed completely that Kyoto would severely disadvantage not only the US but Europe, as well.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. climate treaty secretariat, wants to keep China, and India for that matter, exempt from Kyoto and similar agreements.

Nations such as China, De Boer said in an interview with the Washington Times last weekend, are "still at the beginning of development," while developed nations such as the U.S. bear "a historical responsibility" for gases generated by their economic growth.

Huh? It's OK to be developing, but bad to be developed?

Yep. Swap CO2 for mercury emissions and ask whether it's OK for any nation, regardless of economic status, to pump that poison into the ocean or atmosphere.

De Boer seems to be admitting that restricting emissions also restricts economic growth. So why should the U.S. economy be restricted from growing, especially when it's been demonstrated that free-market economies like ours are best able to develop the technology and efficiencies to manage, even reduce, pollution?

According to the Energy Information Administration, the big, bad USA's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels fell by 1.3% in 2006 while our booming economy grew 3.3%.

This is a point missed by the socialists in the Big Green movement. Free market economies drive efficiencies that reduce the impact on the environment, which comes about because price advantage is gained when less resources are used. By contrast, socialist economies have been the most environmentally destructive in history.

We used energy more efficiently and reduced emissions without Kyoto. Energy use per unit of GDP fell by 4.2% that year, and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP fell by 4.5%.

I'll bet that information doesn't make it into any environmental pamphlets.

"The history of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and present-day China show a clear correlation between Big Government socialism, pollution and poverty," Patrick Michaels, co-author of "The Satanic Gases," wrote in 2002. "In freer societies, there is less government, less poverty and less pollution."

We saw this after the fall of the Soviet Union, when it became obvious that the worst despoilers of the environment were not greedy capitalists in the West but the micromanaged economies of the evil empire.

In fact, when the Soviet Union fell and the reality of the environmental destruction caused by government run economies became apparent people were appalled.

Economic growth requires energy growth, and we have often said that restricting energy growth in agreements such as Kyoto is a recipe for global poverty.

All the evidence we've seen is that such economic pain is not worth a reduction in global temperatures too small to measure.

The world does not need less energy or more regulation. It needs more freedom.

Well, it's not going to get that by following policies that are developed by the United Nations or promoted by Big Green.

(Nothing Follows)