China's future contribution to global warming

Ronald Brownstein for the LA Times:

China requires about three times as much energy as the United States to produce $1 in economic output. It emits nearly four times as much carbon dioxide per dollar of economic activity as the United States. That means that as China's rapid economic growth continues, its demand for energy and its contribution to global warming will skyrocket.

China consumes 40% as much energy as the United States. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the government's source for energy statistics, projects that over the next 20 years, that ratio will rise to two-thirds. China has moved past Japan into second place (behind the United States) among the world's largest oil importers. With new cars flooding China's roads, the agency projects that through 2025, the country's oil consumption will increase 2½ times faster per year than the average for the industrialized Western nations.

The Chinese are feeling the environmental implications of these trends first, with heavy traffic and thick pollution in their major cities. But China's energy use could affect people around the world by accelerating global warming. ...

The Energy Information Administration forecasts that from 1990 through 2025, China's total carbon emissions will rise more than the combined increase for the United States, Western Europe and Japan. ...

If America clings to the energy strategies of the past, it won't have the leverage to nudge China and other rising economic powers toward the fuels of the future.