Rich nation greenhouse gas emissions rise in 2007

By Michael Szabo and Alister Doyle

LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) - Greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized nations rose by nearly one percent in 2007, led by strong gains in the United States, official data showed.

Carbon emissions from countries signed up to the Kyoto Protocol climate pact edged up by 0.1 percent in 2007, mainly due to rises in Japan and Canada.

"The numbers are ... a bit depressing," said Knut Alfsen, research director at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, saying they showed a failure to shift away from fossil fuels. "It shows that we are not able to de-link economic growth from emissions."

Although 2007 carbon dioxide (CO2) figures from a few economies including Australia and Ukraine were not yet available, comparing like-for-like figures showed emissions from countries with targets under Kyoto were 14 percent below 1990 levels, exceeding their goal of a 5 percent reduction by 2012.

The full 2007 data including the U.S. and Turkey, which do not have targets under Kyoto, showed that industrialized emissions were 2.1 percent below 1990 levels.

Under Kyoto, 40 or so developed countries committed in 1997 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels between 2008-2012. Since then, the U.S., historically the world's biggest emitter, has decided not to ratify the treaty.

U.N. climate scientists warn that rising atmospheric CO2 levels will cause global temperatures to increase, which in turn could trigger widespread disease, famine, flooding and drought.

Experts said global emissions are likely to fall in 2008 and 2009 due to lower industrial production and fossil fuel consumption as a result of the economic downturn, but they stressed that more needs to be done to prevent world temperatures from rising by over 2 degrees Celsius, a dangerous threshold according to scientists.