单项选择题

Planet Earth was stricken by floods, drought and fire in 1997, a year which ended with the world’s major polluters quarreling about ways to prevent further environmental disasters.
The climate was dominated in the latter part of the year by E1 Nino, an swelling of warmer water off the South American coast which affects global weather patterns. "I think for sure the most dramatic thing has been the E1 Nino phenomenon that has been experienced throughout the tropics," said Jeffrey Sayer, director-general of the International Center for Forestry Research. E1 Nino is being blamed for widespread floods and drought in the tropics, and has affected other areas as well.
A major demonstration of the phenomenon was drought-intensified bush fires in Indonesia that spread a smog across large areas of Southeast Asia before badly-delayed rains started to fall in late November. Apart from E1 Nino, eastern and central Europe suffered the worst floods in living memory in early July, with over 100 people killed and many thousands of families displaced through the region.
In the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, a UN gathering of 159 countries on global warming finally agreed on cutting greenhouse gas emissions through the next decade after 11 days of confused and uncontrolled negotiations. The conference accepted scientific evidence that heating of the Earth’s surface by gases trapped in the atmosphere causes more and fiercer storms, expanding deserts, melting polar ice and raising sea levels which threaten to flood lowlying islands.
US Vice President A1 Gore called the Kyoto agreement "a vital turning point," but added that more still needed to be done.

The word "polluters" in the first paragraph probably refers to those（）which have polluted the environment.

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