GREEN HOUSE GASES CARBON POLLUTION NEWS HEADLINES: - Emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries are surging anew after a long decline, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said on Tuesday ahead of a crucial forum on tackling global warming. They blamed continued growth in Western economies and a revival of growth in former East Bloc nations, with pollution from transport the biggest culprit by sector. "Greenhouse-gas emissions between 1990 and 2000 went down, but then between 2000 and 2005 they increased again, by 2.6 percent." "Industrialised countries' overall greenhouse-gas emissions rose to a near all-time high in 2005," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said in a press conference telecast from Bonn. The data released on Tuesday comes on the heels of a grim warning by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2005 is the latest year for which the 40 industrialised countries which have signed and ratified the UNFCCC have reported their emissions data, under their obligations to this treaty.
At the weekend, the Nobel-winning IPCC issued a historic report that declared climate change was already visible and could wreak "abrupt or irreversible" damage if unchecked. That conference is tasked with setting down a two-year strategy of negotiations leading to a new pact to deepen curbs on greenhouse gases beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's current pledges expire. Publication of the figures also coincides with the runup to a UNFCCC meeting in Bali, Indonesia, running from December 3-14. The United States -- the world's biggest carbon polluter in 2005 but widely tipped to be overtaken by China in 2007 -- remains outside the Kyoto Protocol. It signed the pact in 1997 but has refused to ratify it, although it remains a member of Kyoto's parent treaty, the UNFCCC. Under the Protocol, only industrialised countries that have signed and ratified it are required to make targeted cuts in their emissions. Developing countries do not have these pledges. De Boer clarified a UNFCCC press release that had said emissions by the convention's industrialised countries, the so-called "Annex 1" countries, had broken records in 2005. "It is at a near all-time high, not an all-time high," he said.
