I have long felt a great deal of frustration by the lack of understanding in the community as to why developed nations should rightly bear the bulk of the cost of de-carbonising the global economy.

To put it in the most simple terms: it's because the developed economies caused the problem. We made the mess, we should clean it up. The carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that have so far caused warming of 0.8 degrees have been emitted over the past 250 years. When we look to see which countries were responsible for putting most of it there, you'll see a Who's Who list of OECD nations.

So that means the developed nations should be cutting their emissions by the most. For a start, we've got the most emissions per capita to cut. But it means more than that: we have put so much carbon in the atmosphere that it's dangerous for developing economies to power their economic growth in the same way we did. We have made such a mess that we're now asking the developing economies to forego the right to free carbon emission that we enjoyed for 250 years.

Therefore, the developed economies ought to compensate the developing economies for losing the right to power their growth with cheap fossil fuels. This can be done a number of ways, and by far the most sensible is by way of renewable energy technology transfer. Developing economies should make the switch to clean energy as soon as possible, and the developed economies should foot the bill. It's only fair.

Much fanfare is also made of "the biggest emitting nation in the world", being China (strangely, that accolade was not bandied about so much before 2008, when it belonged to the USA). This is a meaningless label. What if we divided China into two countries, so it's no longer the biggest emitter in the world? Would that do anything for global emissions? Not at all, so who cares? The only measure of this type that counts is PER CAPITA emissions. We are, after all, talking about anthropogenic climate change. In any case, "the biggest emitting nation in the world" has only been at it for five minutes, so if you count up how much of the 250 years of carbon actually came from China, it looks paltry when compared to Europe and the USA.

The purpose of giving developing economies a break in a global climate deal is only about fairness and equity. It has nothing to do with the provision of aid to third world countries, and it is time this was properly reported and understood by the people of the developed world.

I always wonder whenever I hear the term 'developing country' how long the vast majority of them have been 'developing' and when the hell we should expect them to complete their 'development'. Latin America has been a perpetual state of abject poverty since its colonization; Africa still continues to drag its knuckles as the basketcase of the world and despite unwarranted predictions of imminent superpowerdom, India is basically still the shithole it has always been.

You say that our 'hogging' of carbon emissions is basically unfair to poorer countries that should be able to develop but can't because the pollution stresses on the planet would be too high coupled with our excessive emissions. But I say that most of these countries are going nowhere. Period. A properly industrialized India, Latin America or Africa is not 'just around the corner'; rather, the idea of any of these things to me is a chimerical pipe-dream. Therefore, we have little to worry about regarding carrying forward the development of the third world so that it can industrialize without burdening the carbon capacity of the planet. It's going nowhere. They'll continue to produce insignificant levels of carbon emissions relative to the rest of world for perhaps forever, as they are evidently civilizations that lack the capacity for 'advanced' civilization (in the modern sense).

imperium - excellent posting

10/10

Mozz,

As always, you said what I think but much more fluently.

Paella wrote on Dec 16^th, 2009 at 3:47pm:



Your 'housemate' has no right to your dishes, dirty or clean. He used to eat off banana leaves and lived under a tree. His extended family still do and so would he if it wasn't for you generously sharinng the mod cons of the house. He can negotiate houserules but he cannot dictate how he accesses your dishes, fridge, kitchen, TV, laptop, phone etc.

Your 'housemate' brought none of these thing to the house. If he'd rather move back under the tree and the 'old' ways, then yes, you should clean the dishes. Or hire him to do them for you.

Quote:


Then it is the duty of Western countries if what is happening is actually serious to repair their own problems in the best way that they can; it has never been their duty to assist the rest of the "developing" world in developing with environmental responsiblity. If we're the problem, then obviously the solution is to deal strictly with ourselves. Africa, India, Latin America, etc. are not the problem and never will be a problem, because, well, you know..



Their development train only has one stop: Nowheresville. All aboard!

A couple of important points are being missed.

Firstly, the purpose of a global emissions treaty is to reduce emissions. It is not to redistribute wealth. This is why, in my initial post, I made the point that being fair to the developing economies has nothing to do with the provision of aid to the third world. It is about reducing emissions quickly and efficiently. That’s all. The denial movement incessantly brings the redistribution issue in to the picture: they are the only ones doing this. I suspect that they don’t actually understand that this is NOT about redistribution. They are simply not capable of seeing it in any other way. Many of the posts in this thread demonstrate this point.

The second point is that it is cheaper to reduce emissions in under developed nations than it would be to achieve the same reduction in a developed economy. This is simply because, as the economy is not fully developed, the energy generation and distribution systems are less efficient. It is cheaper and easier to improve an inefficient system than it is to improve an efficient system. The purpose of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism and the Joint Implementation Scheme is exactly that: to encourage developed economies to achieve reductions where it is the least costly to do so.

The trick that the rich nation-states are trying to pull off is to try to screw as much out of the developing economies as they can. This strategy is as immature and short-sighted as it is predictable.

We need to cut the planet’s carbon emissions, and quickly. It doesn’t make any difference where we cut them, as a ton of carbon emitted in Bangladesh or Uzbekistan  goes into the same atmosphere that we breathe in Germany, the UK or Australia. So let’s all just act like grownups and agree to cut our emissions and share the cost of doing so equitably.

Paella wrote on Dec 17^th, 2009 at 6:07pm:


The denialists and the group of 77, numbering 126 - the 'developing' countries. To them, it is ALL about the money.