"MOSCOW -- Russia has rebuffed calls for a more ambitious plan to cut its carbon dioxide emissions after environmentalists branded its current pledge inadequate and backward-looking.

The world's fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, Russia pledged in March to keep its emissions at 25-30 percent below the level it generated in 1990, the year before the Soviet Union and its vast industrial complex collapsed.

Green groups say the pledge, made ahead of a global warming summit in Paris in December, is far too easy for Moscow to fulfill because 1990 was a time when Soviet industry was a notoriously prolific polluter whereas Russia's industrial base today is much smaller."

Andrey Kuzmin reports for Reuters September 23, 2015. [2]

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"Russia: the Unsustainable Superpower" (Guardian) [3]