A RARE piece of good news about the global climate arrived this week. Emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas involved in global warming, fell last year despite a surge in the world economy.
The 0.5 per cent fall in global carbon emissions is the first since the start of the decade, when the collapse of socialist economies in Eastern Europe caused a brief drop. This time, however, modern technology is lending a hand and some large, fast-growing economies are reducing emissions.
"During the past two years, the global economy has grown by 6.8 per cent, while carbon emissions held steady," says Chris Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC, who made the calculations using data from BP Amoco. The news should boost flagging negotiations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Industrialised nations agreed to national targets two years ago in Kyoto. But Congress in the USthe world's ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.