Next month, the greatest athletes in the world will visit Beijing for the Olympic Games. Undoubtedly they’ll set new records in plenty of sports.

But after the stars go home, China (which has cut back industrial production in an effort to clear the air ahead of the Olympics) will go back to setting a dubious record of its own: It’s the greatest emitter of carbon dioxide on earth.

China’s CO2 emissions rose 8 percent last year, after jumping more than 11 percent in each of the two previous years. According to a Dutch study, China alone accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse-gas emissions in 2007, and its current lead over the United States in such emissions is only expected to grow.

Contrast that with our environmental record.

The U.S. government estimates that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased by just 1.6 percent in 2007, after dropping 1.5 percent the year before. The growth in our emissions is less than the growth of our Gross Domestic Product, meaning we’ve improved the economy while reducing the growth in our emissions.

And we’re doing that without being part of the Kyoto treaty.

That 1997 agreement requires the 37 countries that signed it to slash emissions by a combined 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But the treaty is a pipe dream. Instead of falling, the U.N. reported that such emissions are nearing “an all-time high.” Greenhouse gas emissions from the Kyoto signers increased 2.6 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Signing Kyoto may allow a country to claim it’s a good “global citizen,” but many of those citizens aren’t keeping their promises. The U.N. reports Kyoto signers Austria, New Zealand and Canada have all increased their emissions over 1990 levels -- by 14, 23 and 54 percent, respectively.

In fact, the U.N. admits that the only reason the world might meet Kyoto’s goal (a 5 percent reduction from 1990 emissions levels by 2012) is because the economies of so many Eastern European economies collapsed when the Iron Curtain fell. In other words, only a domestic recession will allow the planet to hit Kyoto’s target.

Lawmakers understand this point, too. Continued...