China helping push carbon emissions to all-time high
China cut emissions for two years, but levels tipped to increase in 2017, contributing to record global production of greenhouse gases, experts warn
World carbon emissions are set to rise two per cent this year to a new record, scientists said on Monday, dashing hopes that global emissions had already peaked.
Carbon emissions had been roughly flat from 2014 to 2016, but will increase this year mainly due to a rise in China after a two-year decline, the scientists said.
Their data, presented during negotiations among almost 200 nations in Germany about details of the 2015 Paris Agreement climate accord, are a setback to a global goal of curbing emissions to avert more downpours, heatwaves and rising sea levels.
“The plateau of last year was not peak emissions after all,” the Global Carbon Project, a group of 76 scientists in 15 countries, wrote of the findings.
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry, the bulk of man-made greenhouse gases, were on track to gain two per cent in 2017 from 2016 levels to a record high of about 37 billion tonnes, it said.
