Days ahead of the U.N.’s global negotiations on climate change, China and other developing countries said trade restrictions should be part of the talks.
Days ahead of the U.N.’s global negotiations on climate change, China and other developing countries said trade restrictions should be part of the talks.
A lot of high income countries did not have their industrial revolution less then a century ago. That was a bit post WW1, so it was mainly Western Europe besides the Iberian peninsula, US, Canada and Australia, which were industrialized a century ago. Japan did really start to grow in 1960, as did Spain and Italy. South Korea went up in the 1980s. Many already have had peak per capita emissions some time ago. Then you have problems like South Africa and Russia, which both have high emissions, but are not that rich. Russias per capita emissions are above those of the EU since 1951 for example. Time is also a problem, as in countries have falling emissions and others have increased, so that needs to be included. Also technology changed. Things like solar, wind turbines, electric cars, even electric trains, nuclear power plants and so forth are well developed technologies today. That was not the case a century ago. Besides that global climate change and knowledge of human impacts of it, are relativly recent, it only started being a somewhat discussed political point in the 70s.
Point is, that it is complex and there honestly should be a formular to determine each countries contribution and that should include new emissions. Depending on how it is calculated that can absolutly include China.
I think we’re agreed here. With China being the largest emitter of current (as opposed to cumulative) emissions, a formula - which would indeed likely be quite complex - is needed here that can fairly take that into account along with the other points (like the accelerated timeframe required as compared to the rich countries).
The article makes a good point - which I think you allude to - about the definition of rich countries perhaps needing to be updated as part of this (for example, you include South Korea, who isn’t on that list, though weirdly, Japan is, despite having a post WW-II date of the 1960s). Probably should be “advanced economies” instead of “rich countries” - so China would be rich via total GDP measures but perhaps not an advanced economy yet due to the low average per capital GDP or low average individual citizen’s income, for example, while the US would be advanced and rich while (for example) North Korea wouldn’t be either.