Basics-climate-change-pg5

3. North South Divide

Down to Earth, 15 December 2007
The hockey-stick curve

Use of Resources

Despite incontrovertible and mounting evidence, the rich world does not take the threat of climate change seriously. It is high on rhetoric but low on action. Industrialized countries have created the problem of excessive and dangerous emissions. They also use a disproportionate amount of resources.

These nations have emitted greenhouse gases which are still in the atmosphere for their growth, leaving no space for the emerging world. This is the natural debt of the rich countries as against the financial debt of the developing world. Their current emissions are even higher. The

emits roughly 20 tonnes of CO2 from fuel combustion per person compared to 1.1 in

India

and 4 in

China

. The bottom line is that no country has as yet reinvented its energy use or changed its consumption to limit growth. It is business as usual, whatever the consequences.

Frontline, 18 January 2008
Bali road map
by Aman Sethi
Carbon Credits
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows developing countries to set up projects in a wide range of sectors such as energy production and distribution, manufacturing and industries, transport, mining and waste disposal that would demonstrably reduce emissions against a business-as-usual scenario and thereby earn "carbon credits". One carbon credit refers to one tonne of carbon dioxide emissions avoided by the adoption of a certain practice when compared with a business-as-usual scenario and can be sold on the carbon market to a company in the developed world looking to offset excess emissions.

Counter Currents, 18 December 2007
The Bali Deal Is Worse Than Kyoto
by George Monbiot
Fake Carbon Credits

Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from other countries. When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy "hot air" from the former Soviet Union. Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the former Soviet Union countries would pass well below the bar. Gore's scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren't producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Entrepreneurs in

India

and

China

have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up.

US Politics

Although Gore does a better job of governing now he is out of office, he was no George Bush. He wanted a strong, binding and meaningful protocol, but American politics had made it impossible. In July 1997, the Senate had voted 95-0 to sink any treaty which failed to treat developing countries in the same way as it treated the rich ones. Though they knew this was impossible for developing countries to accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. The Clinton administration had proposed a compromise: instead of binding commitments for the developing nations, Gore would demand emissions trading. But even when he succeeded, he announced that "we will not submit this agreement for ratification [in the Senate] until key developing nations participate". Clinton could thus avoid an unwinnable war.

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the US act this way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject to two great corrupting forces.

Counter Currents, 17 December 2007
Bali Climate Conference Ends In Farce
Patrick O'Connor
End of Bali Conference

More than 10,000 delegates, lobbyists, scientists and bureaucrats from 180 countries participated in the Bali conference. The event was the first of a series of international summits scheduled over the next two years, which are to determine a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol due to expire in 2012. All of those present paid lip service to the need for concerted action to avert a global environmental calamity, but each national delegation was primarily concerned to defend its own narrow economic interests.

Deep divisions between the major powers dominated the conference. The European powers, together with

China

India

and other emerging industrial countries, pressed for the inclusion of a reference to the IPCC emission targets in the final statement. The Bush administration "which never ratified Kyoto and has adamantly refused to agree to binding carbon cuts" led a bloc of countries including Japan, Canada, and Australia, which rejected this and also demanded that so-called developing countries be issued emission targets. (These countries are currently exempt under Kyoto.)

In the end, the Bali statement attempted to fudge all the disputed issues. After acknowledging that evidence of climate change was "unequivocal" and that "deep cuts in global emissions will be required", conference delegates endorsed "quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives " for developed countries without specifying any targets. The question of whether undeveloped economies would be assigned emissions targets was similarly left unanswered. Delegates agreed that "nationally appropriate mitigation actions" should be developed for China, India, Brazil and the other emerging industrial countries, "supported by technology and enabled by financing and capacity-building". Exactly what will be done"particularly relating to the transfer of technology and finance from the advanced capitalist countries"remains unclear and is subject to further negotiation between the participating countries.

The Guardian, 03/12/2007
What single breakthrough would best advance the fight against climate change?

George Monbiot
Fairness and simplicity on CO2
There should be an equal allocation, worldwide, of the right to produce carbon dioxide. Our rations can be tradeable - people may use more than their share if they are prepared to buy it - but the revenue should be returned to those who use less. This system works because it is just, easy to understand, requires very little policing and creates powerful incentives to use low carbon technologies.
George Monbiot is the author of Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning

Nicholas Stern
The rich must take the lead
We need a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the rich countries leading the way on targets and trading. The overall targets of 50% reductions in global emissions by 2050 (relative to 1990) agreed at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in June are essential if we are to have a reasonable chance of keeping temperature increases below 2 or 3°C. Within these global targets, the rich countries should aim for a more ambitious reductions target of at least 80% - either made directly or purchased via a global mechanism for trading emissions. Trade in emissions has the double benefit of keeping costs down and providing glue for the global deal.
Sir Nicholas Stern is adviser to the British government on the economics of climate change and development

The Deccan Herald, 11/12/2007

Equality and the poor
by Vandana Shiva

Today global corporations are the main economic players, not countries. And global corporation outsource their pollution to the developing world to reduce costs and maximize profits. Equity demands that the pollution created by corporations be recognized as their responsibility and liability, no matter where they create it. Transferring their pollution burden to the poor of the South is not equity, it is injustice.
We need to revisit the concept of equity and restore integrity to it. Equity with integrity implies both honesty and coherence. First, equity should govern economic policies and actions and not become an excuse for creators of economic inequality to avoid their clear social, economic, and ecological responsibilities. Second, equity at the global level should be derived from equity at local and national levels.
Those who are dispossessing the poor at home and polarizing society have no moral right to invoke "equity" on global platforms to continue to prey on the poor and the planet.
What protects the poor, protects the planet. What hurts the poor hurts the planet. The laws of equity and the laws of ecology have coherence.

The Hindu, Chennai, 13 Mar 2008
Managing climate change
Richard Stagg

The issue is often portrayed as a battle between the developed and the developing world. Wrong. It is something which affects us all and which we need to address together.

This week is Commonwealth week and its theme is Climate Change. There is no other issue which will affect all the 53 countries of the Commonwealth (large, small; rich, poor; north, south) so profoundly.

This issue is often portrayed as a battle between the developed and the developing worlds; between countries like Britain and India. Wrong. It is something which affects us all and which we need to address together. The origins of climate change lie principally in the developed economies. But, unjust though this may seem, its impact will be at least as great in the developing world. In India probably greater: the retreat of the glaciers; rising sea levels; new difficulties facing those farming in arid regions; a less predictable monsoon - on which the lives of so many Indians depend.