China’s emissions outstrip those of EU and US

China is for the first time emitting more carbon pollution per person than the EU, birthplace of the industrial revolution.

In a notable turning point for the world’s most populous nation, China produced 7.2 tonnes of planet-warming carbon dioxide a head last year, compared with 6.8 tonnes in the EU.

Its total C02 emissions outstrip those of both the EU and the US combined, scientists reported.

The news emerged as thousands of people took to the streets around the world on Sunday to demand more action on climate change.

The biggest rally was in New York, where organisers said they were expecting as many as 100,000 people to take part in what could be one of the biggest global climate protests ever staged.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore, former US vice-president, were among those on the rally, along with UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, who marched with France’s ecology minister, Ségolène Royal. “This is the planet where our subsequent generations will live,” Mr Ban told reporters. “There is no ‘Plan B’ because we have no Planet B.”

Many of the marchers at the noisy but peaceful New York rally came from interstate in hundreds of buses chartered for the event.

“I’m here for my grandchildren,” said Charlie Ryan, 71, a retired construction equipment salesman who got up at 4am to ride down from his Chicago home to New York.

Charlotte Plantholt, 35, a nursing assistant who travelled from Baltimore with her 11-year-old daughter and husband, said she had never been on a protest march before but wanted to demonstrate against the power of the fossil fuel industry.

“Until the politicians stop lining their pockets with the oil money, nothing is going to change. We need to put restrictions on these people,” she said.

Others from New York and neighbouring states said the impact of Hurricane Sandy had made them more concerned about the dangers of climate change. “I was out of power for a week. We have a friend whose house was destroyed,” said Meaghan McNamee, 30, a New Jersey educational business consultant, who came with her husband, Kevin McNamee, a software engineer.

“Big corporations are killing our planet while they get richer. It’s the 99 per cent that are getting affected.”

The marches come ahead of a UN summit in New York on Tuesday, where more than 120 leaders, including US President Barack Obama, are due to set out their plans to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide that drive global warming.

These emissions largely come from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, and clearing forests, which releases stored carbon into the atmosphere.

Executives from dozens of companies, including Apple, Ikea and China’s state oil company, Sinopec, are taking part in parallel events in Manhattan, where some are expected to make climate commitments as well.

“It’s very important today for people across the world to march to support leaders to step up and take the challenge around climate change a little bit more seriously,” said Peter Agnefjall, chief executive of Ikea, the home furnishing retailer, as he joined the start of the rally.

“I don’t think it’s an easy question for any company,” he said, adding that governments needed to set the right policies to drive investment in renewable energy and other carbon measures.

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UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has organised this week’s summit – the first time so many heads of state have met to discuss climate change since 2009 in Copenhagen – to bolster preparations for a global climate agreement to lower emissions that world leaders are due to finalise in Paris at the end of 2015. But China’s President Xi Jinping will not be attending the summit.

Nor will India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, even though the total carbon emissions of his country will probably overtake those of the EU within four years, according to the Global Carbon Project, a 13-year-old international collaboration of climate researchers who track emission trends.

“What is remarkable this year is that China’s per capita emissions outstripped Europe’s for the first time,” said professor Sybil Seitzinger, executive director of the Stockholm-based International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme.

China overtook the US to become the world’s biggest carbon polluter in 2006 as emissions surged from the factories and power plants that have turned it into the world’s workshop.

China is now responsible for 28 per cent of global emissions, followed by the US with 14 per cent and the EU with just 10 per cent.

However, Europe’s falling emissions, driven in part by weak economic performance, hide the fact that it consumes so many goods made in countries such as China.

“When accounting for these ‘consumption’ emissions, EU emissions have only stabilised,” the Global Carbon Project said.

Total global carbon dioxide emissions are expected to rise to 40bn tonnes in 2014, the largest amount in human history.

That is putting the world on track to reach potentially dangerous levels of global warming within 30 years, the scientists said.

Governments agreed nearly five years ago to keep global average surface temperature warming below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times. There has already been nearly 1 degree of warming since then.

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Long ride to march

Brother and sister Terence and Letitia Jones left their home near Jamaica Bay at the southern side of New York’s Long Island at 8am on Sunday to join the thousands of demonstrators in Manhattan, writes Vivianne Rodrigues.

They wanted to make sure they would have enough time for the 90-minute train ride to midtown Manhattan before taking their assigned places for the march starting after 11am. They signed up to join the protest months ago.

“It’s the least we can do,” said Ms Jones, 28. “Our neighbourhood is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy and that was two years ago. If that’s not global warming, I don’t know what is.”

Mr Jones, 22, a community college student, said he hoped politicians would “see the march and know that we won’t stand by them if they do nothing. Everybody is responsible, but we need different laws.”

Janet March, a 68-year-old retired teacher, came from Poughkeepsie in the Hudson Valley. She spent the night with friends in Brooklyn and was heading alone to join the march.

“My friends just didn’t feel up to standing for hours on the street, surrounded by thousands of people! But I don’t mind. I have already lived most of my life and I live in a very beautiful place, which is the Hudson Valley. But even there, things are changing fast and for the worse.

“I’m doing this for the next generation. What are all these young people going to inherit if we do nothing to revert global warming?”