Having sped past the U.S. as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases, China has become a despoiler on a scale as monumental as its economic expansion, plundering smaller nations to fuel its own rising tide of consumption.

A New York Times article just after the UN climate-change conference in Indonesia identified China as the pivotal determinant on global warming. Now, the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine has drawn a scathing portrait of a nation that not only leads the world in coal consumption, but also uses more than the next three highest-ranked nations – the U.S., Russia and India – combined, with ominous implications for the planet.

China says that as a poor nation of 1.3-billion people, it is entitled to pollute and spew greenhouse emissions to alleviate poverty. But with its middle class projected to leap from less than 100 million to 700 million by 2020, and with sales of Porsches, Ferraris and Maseratis flourishing in Beijing, that argument is rapidly losing its edge.

President Bush is trying hard to polish his image on global warming, but buried in his fancy talk about setting long-term goals for reducing emissions by mid- 2008, the U.S. president’s core message is still the same – don’t dare mess with economic growth.

Instead of binding limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, favored by the United Nations and many countries, he’s still pushing a voluntary approach on climate change and lobbying some of the world’s biggest polluters to rally behind him.

The British government, which had initiated the first-ever climate-change discussions before the UN Security Council, pushed the issue because of its potential to cause wars. China, however, said the 15-member body had no authority to deal with it.

Driven to areas where people live by shrinking ice due to global warming, polar bears have become a prime target for poachers, both for meat and the thousands of dollars their pelts can fetch. Russia’s government hopes a legal hunt can rein in the rampant poaching.

The former U.S. vice-president told a Swedish audience: “If the crib is on fire, you don’t speculate that the baby is flame retardant.” He was joined by EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, who said it’s important people understand there’s more to climate change than a few degrees difference in temperature.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic holds some 25 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas, among other resources, and the melting of the Polar ice cap due to human-induced climate change is accelerating the stampede for riches. It's a catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for Inuit populations whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters.