Rich nations failing to cut greenhouse gas

Few of the 33 governments who submitted figures to the UN Climate Secretariat in Bonn will cut emissions from power plants, factories and cars by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Of the Kyoto backers, 17 of 30 industrialised countries were exceeding their targets by just over 300 million tonnes in 2004. The other 13 were ahead by more than 600 million tonnes - highlighting what some analysts say was a flaw in the pact, giving over-generous targets to former communist states.

Among Kyoto supporters, Spain was about 48 per cent above 1990 levels and Portugal, Greece, Canada and Ireland were all at least 20 percent higher. Overall emissions in the 15 longest-standing members of the European Union edged up 0.2 per cent in 2004 overall from 2003 to 4.24 billion tonnes. Overall, they were 1.1 per cent below 1990 levels.

In total, emissions of carbon dioxide rose to 15.1 billion tonnes in 2004 from 14.5 billion in 1990.

That number could be far higher, as several nations, especially Russia, where smokestack emissions have plunged since the collapse of the Soviet Union, have yet to submit figures for 2004.

Emissions by the United States, the world's main source of greenhouse gases but which is outside Kyoto, rose by 1.7 percent in 2004 from 2003 to 7.07 billion tonnes and eclipsed a previous peak of 6.98 billion in 2000. George Bush, the US president, pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it would cost US jobs and wrongly excluded developing nations from its 2012 target.

At UN climate talks in Montreal last year, the US climate negotiator Harlan Watson had pointed to Washington's success in cracking down under Mr Bush.

"Look at the data - the United States has done better in the first three years of the Bush administration in addressing greenhouse gas emissions than the EU ... the UK, France, Germany," he said.

Many scientists say that a build-up of emissions is raising temperatures and could bring catastrophic changes including more heatwaves, droughts and melting icecaps that could raise world sea levels by almost a metre by 2100.