Al Jazeera :
Cities in Asia and the United States emit the most heat-trapping gases that feed climate change, according to new data, as delegates at United Nations climate talks decide how much rich nations will pay to help the world cut emissions.
According to Climate Trace’s annual data released on Friday at the Conference of Parties, or COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, seven states or provinces spewed more than 1 billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gases, all of them in China except the US state of Texas, which ranks sixth. Shanghai topped the list, producing 256 million metric tonnes.
The organisation, cofounded by former US Vice President Al Gore, also found that China, India, Iran, Indonesia and Russia had the biggest increases in emissions from 2022 to 2023 while Venezuela, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the US had the biggest decreases in pollution.
The release of the data comes as climate officials and activists alike are growing increasingly frustrated over the world’s inability to clamp down on planet-warming fossil fuels as well as the countries and companies that promote them.
On Friday, oil executives, including from Total, BP, Equinor and Shell, appeared at the summit and said they would invest $500m to expand access to sustainable modern energy and help people, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, to transition to clean cooking practices.
But the sizeable presence of fossil fuel industry lobbyists at the meeting angered environmental groups and activists.
“It’s like tobacco lobbyists at a conference on lung cancer,” David Tong from campaign group Oil Change International told the AFP news agency.