A unattributed October 21st Associated Press article reports:

The industrialized world again in 2007 boosted, rather than reduced, its emissions of global-warming gases, the U.N. reported Wednesday, as international negotiators looked ahead to crucial climate talks in December.

But a search of the Web easily turns up news stories that show 2008 data, referring to numbers compiled by the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (“IWR”). This data, when compared to the IWR’s prior year data, shows that CO2 emissions from the “industrialized world” dropped substantially in 2008 versus 2007 (although the IWR goes out of their way to make that fact difficult to discern, by showing comparisons between 2008 and 1990 rather than a comparison with the prior year.)

CO2 emissions by the US dropped more than 3% between 2007 and 2008. Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan were all also down, though not as much. (The European Union in the aggregate was down 1.5%.)

Furthermore, a report by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency earlier this year notes that “For the first time in history…the share of global CO2 emissions from developing countries is slightly higher (50.3 %) than from industrialized countries (46.6 %) and international transport (3.2%) together.”

So, while total worldwide emissions were up 1.9% in 2008 versus 2007, nearly all of the increase came from China and India. And more than all of the net increase came from “developing countries” rather than the “industrialized world” that the AP is attempting to demonize.