China will overtake the US as the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases this year, according to the International Energy Agency.
China had been forecast to surpass the US in 2010, but its sizzling economic growth has pushed the date forward, IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said.
"In the past couple of months, economic growth and related coal consumption has grown at such an unexpected rate," Mr Birol said. China’s rising emissions will effectively cancel out other countries’ attempts to reduce their own, he said.
Mr Birol’s comments mark the direst prediction yet about China’s contribution to global warming.
They follow the release of a Chinese government report detailing the costs of climate change, but asserting that the country should focus on development before it thinks of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Higher-than-average temperatures mean spreading deserts, worsening droughts, shrinking glaciers and increased spread of diseases, said the report, compiled by more than a dozen government bodies.
Wheat, rice and corn yields could fall by up to 37 per cent in the second half of the century, it said.
China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gasses, but it is exempt from its restrictions because it is a developing country.
