Someone put the Goracle on a slow boat to China,

China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, figures released today show.

The surprising announcement will increase anxiety about China's growing role in driving man-made global warming and will pile pressure onto world politicians to agree a new global agreement on climate change that includes the booming Chinese economy. China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the world's biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen as early as next year.

But according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those from the US already. It says China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes.

Jos Olivier, a senior scientist at the government agency who compiled the figures, said: "There will still be some uncertainty about the exact numbers, but this is the best and most up to date estimate available. China relies very heavily on coal and all of the recent trends show their emissions going up very quickly." China's emissions were 2% below those of the US in 2005.

So, if China is the world's #1 polluter, do you think the "We have to plant tender baby kisses on Gaia instead of belching Co2 in her face," crowd will start complaining primarily about the Chinese instead on the United States?

No. Why? Two reasons.

#1) China doesn't care what a bunch of Earth hippies think about anything and they're barely even willing to go through the motions to pretend like they do. So, whining about them will tend to be distinctly unsatisfying.

#2) These Carbon Credit trading schemes and Kyoto are as much designed to stick it to the US as they are to do something about global warming. That's because anti-Americanism and damaging the US economy are big motivators for a lot of the global warming alarmists. Having China as a primary target, instead of the US, would therefore demotivate a lot of the greenies.