China's high-stakes emissions game
The United States is off the hook: last year, China overtook America to become the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. It is said that 'the tall tree attracts the wind' and, from now on, China will be the main target of the criticism that used to be directed at the US for refusing to accept binding limits on its greenhouse gas emissions.
What's particularly striking is the speed with which China has passed the US. In 2005, its carbon dioxide emissions were 2 per cent lower than those of the US; last year, they were about 8 per cent higher.
Yet China has only four times the population of the US, and the average Chinese is nothing like a quarter as rich as the average American. In fact, the vast majority of Chinese don't even own cars. So why does China produce so much carbon dioxide?
One reason is cement. The pace of building in China is so intense that the country produces 44 per cent of the world's cement, and cement production is a major source of greenhouse gases.
The main culprit, however, is coal, which accounts for 70 per cent of China's energy consumption. China already burns more than twice as much coal as the US, and almost as much as everybody else in the world combined.
In the race to keep up with soaring energy demand, it is building 550 new coal-fired power stations. So, China's emissions will continue to race ahead of everybody else's.
But climate change will affect the lives of ordinary Chinese people, and the government and the experts know it. One government study last year predicted a 37 per cent fall in crop yields within the next 50 years if current trends persist. That prediction implies mass starvation.
Don't officials care? Of course they do, but they are in a high-stakes poker game. There is going to have to be a global agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions within the next five to 10 years. However, countries like China and India must get special terms, or their hopes of a prosperous future are doomed.
Five hundred years ago, average incomes in Europe, India and China were about the same. Then the Europeans got the jump on everybody else technologically, grew unimaginably rich and powerful, and conquered practically the whole world. They also industrialised and, for 200 years, poured excess carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Now, the rich countries are concerned about the consequences. They are even willing to curb their emissions - but they can easily afford to. China, India, and all the other once-poor countries that are now experiencing very rapid economic growth, cannot. So, the deal must be that they get to keep on growing fast, and the rich countries take the strain.
Developed countries can cut their own emissions very deeply, leaving some room for the developing countries to expand theirs. Or they can pay developing countries to adopt clean-burning coal technologies, build renewable energy sources, and not cut down rainforests.
The developing countries will never get that deal unless they demonstrate an unwillingness to curb their emissions without it. That is what they are doing at the moment, and it's not actually a poker game at all. It is a game of chicken.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries
