New climate strategy: track the world’s wealthiest
Published: July 6, 2009
Updated 4 months ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US researchers have proposed a new strategy to tackle the global climate dilemma: target the biggest polluters in a country, who also tend to be the wealthiest individuals.
Under the framework, a universal cap — rather than different caps for different countries — would be placed on carbon emissions and countries would then be tasked with getting individuals living beyond that cap to reduce their carbon footprint.
“Most of the world’s emissions come disproportionately from the wealthy citizens of the world, irrespective of their nationality,” said lead author Shoibal Chakravarty, a research scholar at the Princeton Environmental Institute.
“We estimate that in 2008, half of the world’s emissions came from just 700 million people,” he added, noting that many emissions owe to lifestyles that involve airplane flights, car use and the heating and cooling of large homes.
The plan, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, proposes to use national income distribution data for each individual country in order to estimate how carbon emissions are shared out among individuals.
After estimating global carbon emissions, the researchers proposed a rule to derive a universal cap on global individual emissions and determine corresponding limits.
The study did not say how the countries would implement the plan, although it noted that “a well-designed national policy would contain costs and not exacerbate inequalities.”
About half of global greenhouse gas emissions come from less than a billion of the world’s inhabitants, the researchers noted in explaining the logic behind their approach.
“Our proposal moves beyond per capita considerations to identify the world’s high-emitting individuals, who are present in all countries,” the University of Princeton research team wrote in its study.
The Kyoto Protocol, the current carbon-capping pact, charges rich countries with cutting most of the emissions while developing countries, including rapidly-developing China and India, are not required to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming.
The researchers said they hope their approach will garner the support of rich and poor countries less than six months before key UN climate change talks in Copenhagen.
As an example, they said that if global leaders set a target to maintain carbon emissions in 2030 at today’s levels, no individual could emit more than 11 tons (10 tonnes) of carbon per year.
According to the projections, 1.13 billion people would be above the cap out of an estimated 8.1 billion-strong world population in 2030.
Each individual now emits a global average of five tons (4.5 tonnes) of carbon dioxide each year. Each European emits about 10 tons (nine tonnes) annually, while each American produces twice that amount, according to the study.
The researchers noted that some existing strategies based on energy use are considered unfair because they conceal the emissions of wealthy major polluters.
Allocating responsibility for carbon emissions has been the thorniest issue confronting negotiations between developed and developing countries ahead of the UN conference in December, which aims to strike a new global warming pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
9 comments
Printer Friendly |
Email
| Get breaking news alerts: Email/mobile |
Carbon tax. Duhhhhh. Not like it’s rocket science….
i’m already policing mcdonalds, the candy aisle and the cigarette counter
who’s policing industry where 99% of emissions come from?
Not only do the rich pollute the most, they also use the most government services ( I don’t need a place to land my personal jet. Do you?), make the most on wars, (Did you make any money on the Iraq war? The Bush family and others, made a lot.) On top of that they pay the least percentage wise of all of us. Tax the rich. I am getting tired of this 21st. century version of Feudalism, complete with Lords and Ladies, crusades, Inquisition, Church rule, and the Sherrifs of Nottingham.
“We estimate that in 2008, half of the world’s emissions came from just 700 million people,” he added, noting that many emissions owe to lifestyles that involve airplane flights, car use and the heating and cooling of large homes.”
BWAHAHAHHA..
You wanna see Cap & Trade get tossed out like yesterday’s burrito? Focus it on Rush Limbaugh and Al Gore. PFFT! Gone like smoke!
It was never about the environment. It was about wealthy interests gaming the system and getting rich(er) by virtue of pollution and on our backs.
It was never going to help the environment, never going to create anything but make work jobs and never going to affect Rush and AL’s jet setting, Wall Street or GE… and they know it.
That’s why a simple, fair, easily understood tax on carbon is DOA while a 1200 page nightmare no one even bothered to read is the focus of the debate.. Because it WAS NEVER about the environment, it was about the system and what’s in it and for whom.
correct.. and isn’t it disgusting that people confuse real climate disruption with these scams?
we’re dying.. and the rich are quite simply, trying to find a way to get more rich from it… that confuses the sheeple who then (out of ignorance) say they must be lying about the whole thing.
Ignorance truly is bliss.. up until you die in your sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning.. heh.
solid caps is all we need, not this trade/market/loophole scheme.
Raw Story should be more circumspect on this issue. The rich control the Pentagon and the military. Robert Gates has initiated his domestic cyber defense system. Anybody afraid yet?
Look at the carbon footprint of football, baseball or NASCAR events.
Millions clogging the streets with climate damaging machines
purely for entertainment and the enrichment of the uberclasses.
Terrorism is nothing compared to ignorance and stupidity.
Disruption of the planet’s climate will bring down a lot more than three buildings and casualties will far exceed 3000.
No surprise in a nation whose brainwashed peasant classes cling to guns, gods and their own exploiters with equal passion
and believe a ditz like Palin could lead the free world.
No wonder the rest of the world eyes America with growing concern.
Global tax. Global currency. New economic bubble.
massive education, no monetary system, save the planet and our species..
www [dot] thevenusproject [dot] com