Concordia researcher shows which countries are most responsible for the cost of environmental damages from global warming — and the billions of dollars they could be owing.
From CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
Montreal, September 8, 2015 — 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 per cent of the cumulative world debt, while Canada carries about four per cent. 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 per cent 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 tonnes of carbon dioxide. And it’s still going up: the increase in world carbon debt in 2013 alone was 13 billion tonnes, 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 tonne of CO2,” says Matthews. “Multiply $40 by the 13 billion tonnes 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 tonnes of debt accumulated since 1990, at $40 per tonne, 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.”
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Related links:
Cited study in Nature Climate Change
Related article in Environmental Research Letters
OK, so they are saying that they’ve come up with a way to calculate how much money rich countries should (for the sin of working hard and becoming rich) pay to poor countries (for the boon they have given to the planet through poor economic management and corruption and remaining poor). Oh wait, they said they were going to do this:
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
~ Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair, UN/IPCC WG-3
So there you have it. They said that’s what this was all about, now they are coming up with ways to calculate it. Problem being when you give a whole bunch of money to poor corrupt countries, a bunch of people become fabulously rich who buy palatial homes on the Mediterranean, leaving behind poor corrupt countires where nothing has changed.
dmh, Enormous amount of truth in your words. Poor countries are often poor because of corruption.
I am still waiting for someone to tell me exactly how the climate is worse than in the 19thC.
Indeed everything points to the opposite being so.
There is no debt.
Climate Change™ is a proxy for capitalism; it has nothing to do with the environment.
The DC playbook says you start by ignoring “stupid Americans” according to Harvard consultants. Then you wrap the “complicated” carbon tax legislation in a “tax the rich” format that quickly reaches down to the average “stupid” American to raise enormous funds for whatever the playwrights want. Just do it from Paris and use as much executive orders as possible.
Just sit on it. Soon China and India will owe the developed world serious money.
“Fair share”. An all purpose PC phrase.
What is “fair” is generally determined by those who want take something from someone else.
They feel “entitled” to do so.
Did they do their “fair share” of the labour to get their share of the rewards?
Or do they just want the rewards at the end?
So stupid, it hurts.
Screw ’em, NO.
“The U.S. alone carries 40 per cent of the cumulative world debt … ”
But since the U.S. had provide 60% of the cumulative non-military foreign aid since 1946 I’s say you’re still up a few bucks …
BTW the UN and especially the IPCC owe us back rent on the UN facilities. 50 years X 10 million/square inch/minute.
The lesson here is that you need a large percentage of your population living in poverty to off set your carbon footprint.
Hedonics and Climate Change. I feel a bit ill.
The Illusions of Hedonics
JULY 29, 2005 Antony P. Mueller
The term “hedonics” is derived from ancient Greek and basically means “pleasure doctrine”. It is also the doctrine which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) applies when calculating the price indices and for the computation of the real gross domestic product and of productivity. 1 The idea behind hedonic price index calculation is to incorporate quality changes into prices. This way, a product may be on the market at a higher price, but when the product qualities have augmented more than the price in the eyes of the BLS, it will calculate that the price of this product has actually fallen.
Applying the hedonic technique to a host of goods and services means that even when prices were generally rising, but product improvement are deemed to be larger than the price increases, the calculated inflation rate will fall. With a lower inflation rate, the transformation of nominal gross domestic product (GDP) into real GDP will render a higher result. Likewise, given a constant labor input, productivity will increase. Hedonics opens the door to producing magical results: a lower inflation rate with generally rising prices, a higher growth rate although the economy may be weaker, and a higher productivity number, although productivity would have been declining without the hedonic imputations.
https://mises.org/library/illusions-hedonics
Real world studies of world CO2 flux has shown that Westernized countries are CO2 sinks and undeveloped countries are net producers. They owe us in the developed countries according to this people.
Willis did an article on this (probably within the last year) which showed, in general, the point you make is correct. It was surprising how many developed countries were carbon sinks (Australia being what of the largest net sinks).
Also the one picture released from OCO-2 9which covers only 1/4 of the year and seasonal variation) also leads general support to the point you make.
If one looks at the net position. it is the developing world that would be obliged to pay and carry most of the ‘debt’, but as others have pointed out, to date, their is no evidence of any damage, and future ‘damage’ is only a product of computer modelling which modelling has so far proved to be wholly inaccurate.
Scotland has had a cold wet Summer.
Do we get a rebate, please?
Never understood how Canada, which is mostly wilderness, can be carbon positive. Surely our vast expanses of forest and prairie must suck up far more carbon than we produce.
Been saying that to my warmist “friends” (I have lost a few over this debate) for almost 20 years. Our carbon sink has got to be the largest on the planet ( with a pop. of only 36 million, which is less than California and over an area third largest on the planet??
This study is absurd! No it is beyond absurd! People like this should be treated the same way as somebody that yells “fire” in a movie theater!!! JAILTIME. ( sorry about the yell)
Third largest or second largest?
I take a different view. there are two groups:
1. countries that created the false CAGW meme. they should pay for all mitigation and damages. it’s their baby.
2. countries that emitted the least amount of CO2. they should pay nothing, as they only went along with this meme because of the promise of $$$.
however, the first group has no intention of forking out the promised $100 billion annually, & the second group has no intention of signing on to an agreement that does not provide the money. stalemate. Paris flops. CAGW meme disappears and we can all return to the far more serious matters facing all countries at this time.
You left out the UN. It represents us all and wants authority to control….er….help us all.
(For our own good, of course.)
Just waiting for the day that the UN gets bulldozed into the East River!
The next progressive spin innovation will be to classify carbon remuneration to the UN as a stimulus funding scheme and pitched as economic development and world growth stimulus. The UN will be in charge of the tally for jobs created or saved on a global scale with the carbon tax spending effort.
If there are damages to other countries because of carbon emissions from countries that are responsible for most of the worldwide emissions, now and in the past, should there be compensation, that’s the question.
Damages? What damages? To many plants?
Some of those plants are food.
How much food should be eliminated to “compensate”?
Well, yeah, but there are no “damages” caused by carbon emissions. None. On the other hand, there are known benefits to the increased CO2 – namely increased greening, therefor more food, and a more vibrant biosphere. So the CO2 lagards owe us. Pay up.
😎
There’s a phrase, “Great minds think alike.”
I don’t claim to be “a great mind”. (If I ever do, someone please give me a swift kick in the rear!)
But great ideas? They often occur to more than one.
The truly pathetic thing is that they still can’t document even one dollar of damage being done by CO2.
On the other hand, skeptics have already cataloged billions, if not trillions of dollars in benefit done by CO2.
Their attribution argument is total BS. The Lloyd study found that over the last 80 centuries the average deviation of temp was about 1C. But the HAD 4 data shows just 0.8C of warming since 1850 or the last 165 years.
So where is the impact from the extra co2 emissions????? And this comes after the end of the LIA ice age. These people are barking mad.
The above should read the average deviation per century. Lloyd study used ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland.
Have they taken into account the fact that everybody eats? Most food is cooked by fire. So whether you flick a switch or burn a piece of wood (or some dung) you are emitting CO2.
Perhaps it is not clear what a forcing is. When an oven is turned on, the temperature does not instantly increase to the set temperature. Instead, what is turned on is a heater and, as time passes, the oven heats up. The heater provides heat which is a forcing on the temperature of the oven. The oven temperature changes according to the time-integral of the net forcing.
If CO2 is a forcing on average global temperature, its effect on temperature must be determined by the time-integral of the CO2 level (or the time-integral of a function thereof). The CO2 level during the entire Phanerozoic eon has always been more than about 150 ppmv. There is no way that the time-integral of the CO2 level (or the time-integral of a function thereof) can consistently calculate temperatures unless CO2 has no effect on climate and the temperature change is caused by something else.
Proof that CO2 has no effect on climate and identification of the two factors that do cause reported average global temperature (AGT) change (sunspot number is the only independent variable) are at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com (new update with 5-year running-average smoothing of measured AGT. This shows the near-perfect explanation of AGT since before 1900; R^2 = 0.97+). Use of V2 SSN changes some coefficients but has no significant effect on R^2.
According to NASA pics of CO2 dispersion around the planet, less CO2 exits from the East coast than enters from the West coast (prevailing W>E winds and all,) so that makes the US a net Carbon sink. Pay up.
The benefits far outweigh the imagined damages. Therefore, I think the developed nations deserve compensation. I, for one, would be satisfied with a handshake and a hearty “Thank you”.
A small disagreement.
The damages aren’t “imagined”. They are “modeled”. 😎