Smoke stacks and exhaust pipes around the world are blasting greenhouse gas emissions to a new record annual high. They should break 39 billion tons this year. But there's also some good news, a new study published Tuesday said. The rate at which people are polluting the air may be leveling off. In the West, emissions contributing to global warming even dropped last year. The United States pumped 3.7 % less carbon dioxide into the air in 2012 than in the previous year; Europe 1.8 % less. Globally, greenhouse gases are being emitted at a slower rate this year than they were last year, and in both years the climb in emissions was less intense than in the past decade taken as a whole, said researchers at Britain's East Anglia University. Justices to review greenhouse gas regulation Drop in the bucket It's an improvement -- but a drop in the bucket by global emission standards. Greenhouse gases are blowing into the atmosphere at rates 61 % higher than they were in 1990, the baseline year for the Kyoto Protocol. The international agreement is designed to decrease emissions contributing to global warming by holding its signees to reduction goals. The vast majority of the world's nations have signed on to it. The United States is not one of them. China is. But the world's largest carbon emitter, which wrested the dubious title from the United States in recent years, pumped 5.9 % more