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Researcher: The US Owes the World $4 Trillion For Trashing the Climate

Posted by samzenpus on from the picking-up-the-bill dept.

merbs writes: Climate change wasn't created equal. Rich, industrialized nations have contributed most of the pollution and gone way over their carbon budgets—while smaller, poorer, and more agrarian countries are little to blame. The subsequent warming will, naturally, impact everyone, often hitting the poorer countries harder. So should rich countries pay up? Researcher Damon Matthews has quantified how much historically polluting nations owe their global neighbors—and it's a lot.

1 of 528 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Go after China by slew · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FWIW, This analysis only covers CO2 emissions since 1990, not pollution in general.

    What mostly saves china in this cursory analysis their CO2 emissions per capita.
    Although china has lots of CO2 emissions (30%), it also lots of people, when you divide it out compared to the US (15%) and EU (11%).

    If, however, you compare thing per GDP (adjusting for purchasing power parity in respective localities), thinks look a bit different.

    China: 650 kg CO2/1000 USD
    Russia: 530 kg CO2/1000 USD
    USA: 330 kg CO2/1000 USD
    EU: 220 kg CO2/1000 USD