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polluters are in the world. You might harbor a suspicion that rich countries are up there somewhere, but you might also mitigate that suspicion by telling yourself that we are doing the most to cut emissions as well.
It the latter were true, our President would not have had an issue with signing the Kyoto Agreement. It is interesting that many underdeveloped countries signed.

Scientists from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have compiled a fairly impressive and comprehensive set of figures on the subject of Carbon footprint. This information is available from:
http://www.ucsusa.org/glo bal_warming/science/each-count rys-share-of-co2-emissions.htm l . I recommend that the reader acquire a copy and look it over.

Based on their numbers, here is a list of the top 5 Carbon emitters in the world.

Per/Capita Ranking
1 - The United States at 1,446,777,000 tons, or about 5.37 tons per person.
2 - Australia at 83,688,000 tons, or about 4.63 tons per person
3 - Saudi Arabia at 73,098,000, or about 3.88 tons per person
4 - Canada at 111,723,000 tons, or about 3.76 tons per person
5 - North Korea at 69,412,000, or about 3.09 tons per person

Of those countries listed, only North Korea could be considered a truly underdeveloped country, though some might make a case for Saudi Arabia.

On a pure Carbon emissions perspective the top 5 offenders are:
1 - United States
2 - China
3 - Russia
4 - Japan
5 - India

Of those countries, again, only one, India, might be listed as underdeveloped, though China may qualify as emerging.

How does this compare to the economies of those countries
The United Nations has compiled extensive demographic information, which is freely available from: http://unstats.un.org/UNSD/Dem ographic/products/socind/inc-e co.htm

Their Database provides the following per/capita GDP figures:
US = $43,562
Japan = $34,661
Russia = $6,877
China = $2,055
India = $784

It appears that the number one polluter in the world, the United States of America, also enjoys the biggest share of the fruits of that status. It might be interesting to consider just how much of the polluting industry in underdeveloped countries is owned and operated or directly influenced by the US and Japan. Both countries outsource production of millions of products to China, Korea and other emerging or underdeveloped countries. Japan actually outsources automobile manufacturing to the US.

This begs a few questions such as:
Just who's footprint is it anyway. Do the US or Japan take the hit for products

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