Study Reveals Countries With Biggest Climate Debt by 1kiki

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Study Reveals Countries With Biggest Climate Debt

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Monday, July 29, 2024 05:02
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Monday, November 30, 2015 7:23 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Study Reveals Countries With Biggest Climate Debt

Tue, 09/08/2015 - 2:58pm
Concordia University

Which countries are most responsible for the cost of environmental damages from global warming -- and the billions of dollars they could be owing. Photo: Concordia University

All countries have contributed to recent climate change, but some much more so than others. Those that have contributed more than their fair share have accumulated a climate debt, owed to countries that have contributed less to historical warming.

This is the implication of a new study published in Nature Climate Change, in which Concordia University researcher Damon Matthews shows how national carbon and climate debts could be used to decide who should pay for the global costs of climate mitigation and damages.

The countries that have accumulated the largest carbon debts on account of higher than average per-capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are the United States, Russia, Japan, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

The U.S. alone carries 40 percent of the cumulative world debt, while Canada carries about four percent. On the other side, the carbon creditors -- those whose share of CO2 emissions has been smaller than their share of world population -- are India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil and China, with India holding 30 percent of the total world credit.

"Thinking of climate change in terms of debts and credits for individual countries shows how much countries have over- or under-contributed to historical warming, relative to their proportion of the world's population over time," explains Matthews, study author and associate professor in Concordia's Department of Geography, Planning and Environment.

"This paints a striking picture of the historical inequalities among countries with respect to their greenhouse gas emissions and consequent responsibility for climate changes."

Calculating climate responsibility

To estimate differences in national responsibility for historical climate changes, Matthews first calculated carbon debts and credits based on fossil fuel CO2 emission and population records since 1990. It was around this date that scientific knowledge and public understanding of the dangers of human-driven climate changes began to solidify.

Since that time, the total carbon debt across all debtor nations has increased to 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide. And it's still going up: the increase in world carbon debt in 2013 alone was 13 billion tons, or about 35% of global CO2 emissions in that year.

So what is the monetary value of this debt?

"According to a recent U.S. government report, the current best estimate of the social cost of present-day CO2 emissions is about $40 USD per ton of CO2," says Matthews. "Multiply $40 by the 13 billion tons of carbon debt accrued in 2013, and you get $520 billion. This cost estimate gives us an indication of how much we could be paying to help lower-emitting countries cope with the costs of climate changes, or develop their economies along carbon-free pathways."

Looking at the total world carbon debt, the numbers are even more staggering: the 250 billion ton of debt accumulated since 1990, at $40 per ton, represents $10 trillion USD.

"No matter how you look at this picture, these numbers are really big -- much, much larger than even the most generous financial commitments currently pledged by countries to help with the cost of climate adaptation and damages in vulnerable countries."

CO2 emissions vs. degrees of debt

Matthews also calculated how much each country has over- or under-contributed to temperature increases as a result of a range of different greenhouse gas emissions. By this measure, the total accumulated world climate debt comes to 0.1 °C since 1990, close to a third of observed warming over this period of time. Again the U.S. is the single largest debtor, and India is the largest creditor. Some countries, however, like Brazil and Indonesia, switch from being carbon creditors, to being among the climate debtor countries, as a result of the additional greenhouse gas emissions produced by deforestation and agriculture.

"This idea of climate and carbon debts and credits highlight the large historical inequalities with respect to how much individual countries have contributed to climate warming," says Matthews. "The historical debts and credits calculated here could be a helpful tool to inform policy discussions relating to historical responsibility and burden sharing, by providing a measure of who should pay -- and how much they might be expected to pay -- for the costs of mitigation and climate damages in countries with lower emissions."

What does this mean for the upcoming Paris meetings?

As countries continue to announce their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (or INDCs) leading up to December's climate talks in Paris, it is becoming increasingly clear that these emissions pledges will not be enough to meet the international goal of limiting global warming to 2°C (see related research by Matthews' research group published last month in Environmental Research Letters). The idea of additionally accounting for debts and credits would of course increase the burden placed on countries with high historical emissions.

"But these historical inequalities are real and substantial, and need to be fully acknowledged," says Matthews. "My hope is that this discussion will help lead to a stronger and more meaningful global climate agreement."

http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2015/09/study-reveals-countrie
s-biggest-climate-debt?et_cid=4801220&et_rid=366206770&type=headline

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Monday, November 30, 2015 7:42 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
The U.S. alone carries 40 percent of the cumulative world debt, while Canada carries about four percent. On the other side, the carbon creditors -- those whose share of CO2 emissions has been smaller than their share of world population -- are India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil and China, with India holding 30 percent of the total world credit.

WTF? I thought USA emission of CO2 is going down

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Monday, November 30, 2015 9:45 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

It's about the total per capita net greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution.

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Wednesday, December 2, 2015 11:56 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Just as a thought-experiment, I tried figuring out what a "fair" carbon usage would be: what standard would we use to decide if a nation or a people were using more than their "fair share" of the carbon cycle?

One way to look at this is per capita energy consumption. Here, the USA pretty much walks away with THIS metric. (There are other nations with similar or even higher per capita usage, but I don't think they have the 100-year accumulation, which is how long CO2 hangs out in the atmo.)

So I suppose you could say that "per capita" is a fair measure, but then ... what if there is a nation that chooses to limit its population in favor of a very high lifestyle? Their per capita usage would be high, but their overall contribution could be quite low. Conversely, if there is a nation which chooses - for ethical or economic reasons - to have a very high population, their per capita could be quite reasonable but their overall contribution would be high. So, at the extremes, per capita doesn't seem to be fair.

How do we account for nations which "offshore" their carbon emissions? The USA uses more energy than simply what is burned within borders, since products manufactured elsewhere also account for carbon emissions.

I suppose we could look at some sort of "national" limit. But it seems unfair to give every nation some sort of limit based on historical accident of where boundaries were drawn.

Maybe the best way would be to give each nation a limit, based on its carbon-absorbing capacity within its borders and its near-shore waters? It would depend on accurate satellite data and widely-accepted models, and of course be subject to revision if a nation changed its land-use or agricultural policies (for example, if Brazil went widely to silvaculture or the USA decided to maintain healthier forests). But it would encourage each nation to improve its carbon-absorbing capacity. The devil is in the details, because those details would make or break to program's success and acceptability. The other problem is the temptation to "trade" carbon emissions. In investigations of carbon trading programs, they were 90% fraudulent: the emissions reductions simply didn't occur. OR in Brazil's case, its wordy commitments to stopping deforestation aren't even worth the paper they're written on. Compliance is a problem, and monitoring would have to be very strict. But overall, if we could get disallow trading and solve the problems of measuring/ modeling carbon flux across national boundaries, I think that would be the fairest way.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Monday, July 29, 2024 5:02 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

Canada’s carbon pricing (a.k.a. “carbon tax”) explained

https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/carbon-pricing-explained/

many Micor-Nation the Tax and Crabon credit trade scams, pirate radio from the seas and absurd and remarkable story of Sealand, a “micronation” on an eerie metal platform, tells about about libertarianism

Principality of Sealand
Suffolk, England
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sealand
A 550-square-meter micro-nation off the coast of Britain.

NOT 195 countries

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