Probably no one who had followed the industry's attempts to downplay concerns about global warming. BP broke ranks with the oil industry in 1997 when CEO John Browne acknowledged that climate change is a matter for public concern and promised to help address it. Now BP has pledged to reduce its global greenhouse gas emissions by ten percent below 1990 levels, a larger reduction than industrial nations have agreed to make, and Shell has followed suit with a similar pledge.
China is second only to the United States in carbon dioxide emissions.
Environmental Defense Fund economist Dr. Daniel Dudek confers with researcher Song Guo Jin and Ma Zhong, director of the Beijing Environment and Development Institute, outside Benxi, where we are jointly developing demonstration projects to reduce air pollution. The consequences could include record heat, drought, northward migration of insect-borne tropical diseases, more intense rainstorms and snowstorms, and rising seas. Recent months have continued to set new records for global average temperature. In the face of these concerns, more than 150 nations reached an agreement in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide. According to Environmental Defense Fund economist Dr.