The "Do Nothing" Climate Change Argument
One of my pet hates is reading something like this ...
Australia produces only about 1.5 per cent of the world's carbon emissions, a proportion that is declining as emissions from the developing nations like China and India soar.
... as an argument that we don't really need to do anything soon about climate change.
Like all disingenuous arguments, the statement is true, but doesn't tell the whole story. Australia has one of the highest per capita green house gas emissions, a consequence of a high standard of living, powered by electricity generated from burning coal.
China's and India's per capita production of greenhouse gasses is tiny by comparison. Although developing quickly, they are still third world economies. They just happen to have lots of people who, unsurprisingly, wouldn't mind having our standard of living.
To suggest that onus is on these countries to limit their emissions, rather than us, is to tell them that they can't aspire to our level of economic development. It's an argument they are likely to ignore, to everyone's detriment.
Most of the man made CO2 floating around in the atmosphere today was produced by developed nations. It's our problem. We have the knowledge and resources to develop new energy technologies, and the responsibility to reduce our emissions while providing the means to allow the developing nations reduce theirs as they grow their economies.
We can't expect them to limit their standard of living to allow us to retain ours.
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Very well said. Per capita is the right way to think about this.
I made a similar argument many times.
One example: http://worldisgreen.com/2007/04/26/dealing-with-climate-change-in-china/
Cheers,
Suhit
Australia has one of the highest per capita green house gas emission rates only because it has a small population in a vast country the size of Western Europe.
Statistics are misused too often to match arguments that then can be refuted very simply.
The size of continental Australia has nothing to do with the size of our per capita emissions.
The number is derived by dividing the CO2 emissions (in tons) by the number of people living here. It would make no difference whether the population is crammed into a small area or spread out on a large land mass.