US greenhouse gas emissions fell 0.8 percent between 2000 and 2003 largely due to the bulk of the manufacturing industry heading offshore.

President George W. Bush trying to burnish his environmental credentials, as he leads wildlife conservation leaders on tour of his home, Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, Thursday, April 8, 2004. When in Texas, President Bush often spends time working outdoors on his ranch. White House photo by Eric Draper

A recession also had an impact but the EPA points out that while these 'bad reasons' caused emissions to drop, 'good reasons' such as new technology in methane capture and coal burning also contributed to the drop.

The US is responsible for about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, but, along with Australia, is one of the few countries to resist the Kyoto Protocol to set goals for reducing emissions.

The US EPA says that the US reduction as its population increased by 8.3 million and its GDP increased by more than the size of the entire China economy, despite recession in 2001.

The EPA did not say how much the recent fuel price rise causing lower sales and usage of  SUV vehicles would also contribute to greenhouse gas emission falls for 2005.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, said that the decrease of 0.8 per cent in gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide had been unexpected: “This was not something we would have projected.”

He claimed the “stabilisation” of greenhouse gas output as a victory for the US policy of avoiding mandatory targets and concentrating on new technologies, such as methane capture and “clean coal”. But he admitted that alongside these “good reasons” for the drop, there were also “bad reasons”, such as the offshoring of manufacturing and commodity chemicals and agricultural fertiliser industries.

Connaughton said that industrial emissions, defined as those generated directly by industry or by the energy used in industrial processes, were below 1990 levels – the baseline for calculating the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from developed countries under the United Nations-brokered Kyoto treaty on climate change.