British group blames West for Chinese pollution

Yahoo News 5 Dec 07;

Western countries are largely responsible for China's greenhouse gas emissions due to their insatiable demand for cheap Chinese products, a Britain-based non-governmental organisation said Wednesday.

In a report released to coincide with the United Nations climate change conference which opened in Indonesia on Monday, the World Development Movement (WDM) said blaming China for climate change was a red herring.

"The very real danger at the Bali conference is the talks breaking down in a pointless blame game," the group's policy chief Pete Hardstaff said in a statement.

"Using the mass media to point the finger at China will not help get the global deal we need to avert climate change disaster. Not only have rich countries historically caused the problem, they are also importing' emissions from the developing world."

He said rich countries like Britain must "recognise their responsibility for fuelling climate change, not only with emissions created on our shores but also with our massive consumption of goods produced overseas."

Carbon pollution, emitted especially by the burning of oil, gas and coal, traps heat from the Sun and warms the Earth's surface, inflicting changes to weather systems.

Emissions are spiralling, driven more recently by coal-fired plants in fast-growing China and India.

China's economy has boomed at nearly double-digit rates over much of the past 25 years and it is now one of world's biggest emitters of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

But on a per capita basis its emissions are much smaller than those of Western nations, and fall even further when trade and consumption are factored into the equation, the WDM said.

"The average Chinese citizen is responsible for emitting three tonnes of CO2 (carbon dioxide), whilst the average UK citizen is responsible for emitting 13.2 tonnes of CO2" each year, the WDM said in a report which estimated emissions on the basis of where products were consumed.

China produced more than it consumed and exported mainly manufactured goods which produced a high level of CO2. Britain, on the other hand, consumed more than it produced and exported low-pollution products like financial services.

The 11-day conference in Bali is being held under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change with delegates from more than 180 nations.