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Claims by the British government that stabilising Britain’s emissions
of carbon dioxide at 1990 levels by 2005 would be a major achievement are
given the lie in a report published by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis
Centre, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The report, Trends ’90, is a compendium of data on greenhouse gas emissions.

The section on Brtain, compiled by Gregg Marland, of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, shows that Britain’s emissions of carbon dioxide reached a peak
around 1970, with a subsequent overall decline.

The decline from 1979 to 1984 was 19 per cent; a slight increase between
1984 and 1987 was offset by a further fall from 155 million tonnes in 1987
to 152.5 tonnes in 1988, the latest year covered by the survey.

‘Total emissions’, says Marland, ‘were only 10.5 per cent higher in
1988 than in 1950, by far the smallest increase among the top 20 nations’.
As a result, Britain has slipped from third to seventh in the ranking of
carbon dioxide emitting nations, and the IPCC target of further reductions
by 1 per cent a year seems eminently achievable.