China and the United States, the world's two largest economies and greenhouse gas polluters, are locked in a stalemate over global warming. While today China pollutes more than the United States, Chinese officials insist that, as a developing economy, China should not be forced to take carbon-cutting actions. China has demanded that the United States, as the world's historically largest polluter, go first. Chinese policy experts say that Mr. Obama's regulation could end that standoff.
It's not clear from the sentence whether the description of the United States as "the world's historically largest polluter" is China's or the New York Times'. It's not clear to me how one would attempt such a ranking. If you look at carbon dioxide emissions per capita, America ranks below Kuwait, Brunei, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahrain, Aruba, and Luxembourg. In terms of pollution generated per unit of GDP, the Soviet Union "generated 1.5 times more pollution than the USA," according to an article in the journal Global Environmental Change. And there are other kinds of pollution, like water pollution, that have not been carefully measured over history. Before tossing around pejorative labels directed at America like "world's historically largest polluter," the Times might want to consider defining its terms and citing its data sources.