San Francisco Chronicle: Far more than previously acknowledged, the battle against global warming will be won or lost in China, even more so than in the West, new data show. A report released last week by Beijing authorities indicated that as its economy continues to expand at a red-hot pace, China is highly likely to overtake the United States this year or in 2008 as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.New statistics released in Beijing on Wednesday by China's National Bureau of Statistics show that China's consumption of fossil fuels rose in 2006 by 9.3 percent, about the same rate as in previous years -- and about eight times higher than the U.S. increase of 1.2 percent.
While China's total greenhouse gas emissions were only 42 percent of the U.S. level in 2001, they had soared to an estimated 97 percent of the American level by 2006.
What China needs, many experts say, is help from the United States and other Western nations to help adopt energy-saving technologies. China's energy consumption per unit of production is 40 percent higher than the world's average, and about 70 percent of its energy comes from coal, usually burned in highly inefficient power plants.
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