The Australian
By: Asa Wahlquist
It is not a list you want to top, but the reality is set out in the Garnaut report: Australia is the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. However, the title is misleading.
Australia does top the emissions table, excluding land-use change and forestry emissions.
But include that measure and the Republic of the Congo is propelled right out in front, followed by Malaysia, Canada and then Australia.
It is also apparent that a year or two can change these rankings. The figures relied on by Ross Garnaut for his report to the Rudd Government are for 2004.
According to the Department of Climate Change's National Greenhouse Inventory 2006, Australia has reduced its emissions per capita over the period from 1990 to 2006 by 13.8per cent, from 32.6 to 28.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
The Garnaut report states the largest national emitters of greenhouse gases are China, followed by the US and the EU.
Then comes Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, India and Japan. Australia is the world's 19th largest emitter of greenhouse gases -- counting the countries of the EU separately -- or 15th using the Garnaut method of grouping the then 25 nations of the EU as one.
But Australia's great natural advantage, besides its bountiful carbon-dense coal, is its size. It is the sixth-largest nation in the world, after Russia, Canada, the US, the People's Republic of China (with or without Taiwan) and Brazil.
An analysis of the top 30 emitters by area ranks Australia 29th, just above Brazil. The highest emitter per square kilometre is South Korea, followed by The Netherlands, Japan, Britain, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.
Even the Department of Climate Change's National Greenhouse Inventory is not all bad press for Australia when it comes to emissions per dollar of Gross Domestic Product. According to the 2006 inventory "the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of the Australian economy, expressed as emissions per dollar of GDP, has declined over the period 1990 to 2006 by 37.3 per cent from 1.0 to 0.6kg CO2-e (carbon dioxide equivalent)''.
Crunching the numbers on greenhouse gas emissions and GDP for more than 200 nations is a difficult exercise, but a contributor to the ever-useful Wikipedia has done just that, and listed Australia at 74th.
The list is led by Chad, a nation with a GDP of $US4.4 billion, and emissions of 125 thousand tonnes. It is followed by Cambodia, Switzerland, Mali, Afghanistan, Sweden and Iceland. The US comes in after Australia, at number 75.
Big Polluters - Where Australia ranks
Total emissions
1. US
2. China and Taiwan
3. Russia
4. India
5. Japan
18. Australia
Emissions per capita*
1. Australia
2. US
3. Canada
4. Saudi Arabia
5. Russia
Emissions per sq km
1. South Korea
2. The Netherlands
3. Japan
4. Britain
5. Germany
29. Australia