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

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.

Comments

US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[Jack9]

What's the Chinese bill?

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[Anonymous Coward]

negative according to the study, since they still havent hit breakpoint.

Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[ScentCone]

China might manufacture the goods, but Americans are consuming them.

Should your employer compensate the people who live near you if you spend your time at home crapping in your back yard and stinking up the neighborhood? They are the ones who buy your services, and that's how you buy the food you leave in digested piles out there, right?

What? The person who's buying your services isn't in charge of how you live your life? Oh.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[phantomfive]

negative according to the study, since they still havent hit breakpoint.

I thought that was funny when I read your post, but actually you are right, according to the article China is still behind on the polluter curve. If new technology (fusion, batteries + wind) becomes viable, they may never hit breakpoint.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[Jane Q. Public]

negative according to the study, since they still havent hit breakpoint.

I thought that was funny when I read your post, but actually you are right, according to the article China is still behind on the polluter curve. If new technology (fusion, batteries + wind) becomes viable, they may never hit breakpoint.

I think the study's methodology is highly suspect.

What of all those people in India and China (and other parts of the world) who burn organics like wood or straw or animal dung for heat, cooking, etc? That puts out far more pollution than a gas or even coal-fired power plant per capita.

The paper is currently paywalled, but I think the study and its methodology deserve some close scrutiny before people start jumping on this bandwagon.

Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[thesupraman]

You really need to think that through for a while.
Or do you really think that most of the world pollution happened in the last decade?
Perhaps you think the US had nice solid restrictions in place over the last 100 years?

Of course, what you will want to do is start everyone on a clean slate now, right? to be fair?
After all, the US has finished its major construction, infrastructure, and industrial development - and what could be better than taxing back anyone else who tries to follow.

The whole point is the US has been a major CO2 producer for a long long time - it will take a long time yet for others to catch up to that.
The whole point of this research is to quantify just that - how some countries have been able to become very wealthy partyly by producing a large amount of CO2 over a long time, and that if we are now going to penalise current producers, it is only fair that we also penalise those who dug the hole in the first place.

The flip side is if you dont want to hold the past producers equally responsible, then you cannot expect the current ones to be held responsible.

Make your choice, but you should not expect to have it both ways.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[phantomfive]

Another question...........how did they put a number on the total damage caused by AGW?

The paper is currently paywalled, but I think the study and its methodology deserve some close scrutiny before people start jumping on this bandwagon.

Absolutely.

That puts out far more pollution than a gas or even coal-fired power plant per capita.

Remember, the paper is not talking about pollution here, it's talking about carbon, so burning wood is carbon neutral.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[riverat1]

The difference between burning wood, straw or dung is that the CO2 released comes from CO2 that was relatively recently absorbed from the atmosphere by plants so it doesn't change the total amount of carbon in the active carbon cycle. Burning coal or gas on the other hand releases carbon that has been sequestered from the active carbon cycle for millions of years and so increases the amount in the active carbon cycle.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another question...........how did they put a number on the total damage caused by AGW?

The paper is currently paywalled, but I think the study and its methodology deserve some close scrutiny before people start jumping on this bandwagon.

Absolutely.

That puts out far more pollution than a gas or even coal-fired power plant per capita.

Remember, the paper is not talking about pollution here, it's talking about carbon, so burning wood is carbon neutral.

Burning down virgin forest for firewood or to clear fields is not carbon neutral, at least no more "neutral" than digging up coal and burning that is "neutral". People who burn wood tend not to be using sustainably grown trees to do so.

Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[ShanghaiBill]

China spews out more pollutants

China produces more CO2 than America, but only about a quarter as much per capita. Also, China only surpassed America a few years ago. America was the leader for more than a century.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[khayman80]

I think the study's methodology is highly suspect. What of all those people in India and China (and other parts of the world) who burn organics like wood or straw or animal dung for heat, cooking, etc? That puts out far more pollution than a gas or even coal-fired power plant per capita. The paper is currently paywalled, but I think the study and its methodology deserve some close scrutiny before people start jumping on this bandwagon. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-09-09]

As others have explained, burning wood can be carbon neutral. And as I just told Jane, the only real caveat here is significant land use change, like deforestation. I've also told Jane that in the 1990s, the upper bound on CO2 emissions due to land-use changes was less than half of the lower bound on those due to fossil fuel emissions.

This can be confirmed using simple accounting or by using 14C isotope ratios. Burning wood releases unstable 14C carbon because it hasn't had time to decay, but there is no 14C in coal. So we actually have several independent ways to see that Jane Q. Public and John O'Sullivan are wrong when they keep blaming developing countries for supposedly emitting "far more" CO2 than developed nations:

... THE ACTUAL DATA from the IBUKI CO2-mapping satellite show that developed "Western" nations are net CO2 absorbers, not emitters. Far more CO2 is generated (and less absorbed in proportion), in the tropics and third-world countries. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-10-21]

I've already told Jane this is nonsense, but he refused to retract this Sky Dragon Slayer claim and keeps blaming developing countries for supposedly emitting "far more" CO2 than developed nations. Once again, John O'Sullivan showed the part of Figure 3 with the net fluxes in July 2009 but "forgot" to show the fluxes for the rest of the year. Since July is summer in the northern hemisphere, those trees grow leaves which temporarily removes CO2 from the atmosphere. But this reverses during winter, which might be why John O'Sullivan "forgot" to show those fluxes. "Principia Scientific International" and several others repeated O'Sullivan's misinformation.

Ironically, when one isn't talking to Sky Dragon Slayers like John O'Sullivan, it isn't controversial to note that developed countries are responsible for most of the CO2 rise. Here's an interactive tool to explore historical CO2 emissions

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Most organic sources of carbon are recycled into the atmosphere, over and over again. If you burn a tree, it probably doesn't affect the amount of carbon in the atmosphere much. The tree was going to decompose (via microbes, termites, bugs, etc.), and end up with the carbon back in the atmosphere. Some small percentage of the tree may end up sequestered in the lower layers of soil over time, but it will be a small percentage.

An analogy is to imagine a money economy. On average, there is a certain amount of money in circulation called the money supply. Dollars go from one owner to another, many times over the course of a year. Typically, most people spend the money in their checking accounts, and save money in their savings accounts. Now imagine what would happen if, one year, EVERYONE decided to pull ALL their money out of savings and spend every last dollar. Inflation would go crazy! Pulling money from savings is not the same thing as pulling it from checking. Inflation would also go crazy if the government just started printing money like crazy, or if lots of people kept finding huge buried treasure chests full of cash, and decided to spend it all. Dollars are fungible, but the types of sources of the dollars are not. The source may affect the circulating money supply. Dollars in savings or treasure chests are like the carbon in coal. Dollars in checking are like the carbon in a tree. Burning the carbon in tree does not substantially affect the circulating carbon, but burning carbon from coal does.

How did you get modded insightful? You don't seem to understand the phrase "active carbon cycle". I guess a couple of modders don't either.

Re: US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[fredgiblet]

The flip side is that those past producers created more efficient means that the new producers can simply purchase wholesale. China didn't have to develop industry using old-school, more polluting methods, they have all the newest methods available already, so they can just slot themselves in at the front. Same with Africa.

The clearest example of this is with cell phones, Most developing countries seem to be skipping straight to 3 or 4G, bypassing all the intermediate steps. Some places in Africa I've heard you CAN'T get landlines, but cell phones are common.

We did all the development, so they get to reap the rewards.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[phantomfive]

Indeed, the model in this paper (one of them.....there were several models) included deforestation.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[riverat1]

CO2 is fungible. If I burn one tree's worth of coal, I've changed the amount in the active carbon cycle by exactly the same amount as if I burned the tree instead. The only way this isn't true is if the tree was going to burn anyway.

It's true that CO2 is CO2 regardless of the source of the carbon.

But the active carbon cycle consists primarily of the carbon that cycles through the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere on relatively short (geologically speaking) time scales. Since the tree you're burning is part of the biosphere it is already part of the active carbon cycle burning it doesn't change the total carbon in the active cycle, just the location. It then becomes available for other trees to take it up continuing the cycle.

Fossil fuels on the other hand consist of carbon that has not been a part of the active carbon cycle for millions of years (in most cases hundreds of millions of years). Burning fossil fuels releases that carbon increasing the total in the active carbon cycle. Since the balance between the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere in the active carbon cycle remains about the same you get an increase in atmospheric CO2, and increase in hydrosphere CO2 (thus ocean acidification) and an increase in the biosphere with more plant growth. Of those three "spheres" the biosphere is probably the most limited since plant growth depends on other things besides the availability of carbon but the balance between the atmosphere and hydrosphere just depends on Henry's Law as modified by Van 't Hoff's equation.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[Beck_Neard]

Biomass (what you're referring to) only makes up for a very small proportion of energy consumption. It's actually considered to be 'low carbon' because if those plants weren't harvested then they'd decompose on the forest floor anyway, producing CO2. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, mature forests don't act as effective carbon sinks. Only newly-growing forests have the ability to sequester significant amounts of carbon. Burning biomass is only carbon positive if it results from clearing forests and preventing new growth. The time scale of this new growth is measured in decades (i.e. it's in the global carbon cycle already), whereas fossil fuels represent carbon that has been stored up for millions of years (carbon that is being newly introduced into the biosphere).

So long story short, stop making up excuses and face up to reality.

Re:US Bill is only 4 Trillion?

[Shortguy881]

Any data model that puts the U.S. at $4 trillion in the whole and China in the black regarding pollution is incredibly inaccurate, especially since the dates measured are after both the U.S. and China industrialized. One set is from 1990 to 2013 and still shows China in the black.

This is sensationalist journalism posing as science. The publication itself looks to target wealth as an indicator of carbon emissions. Its abstract is clearly biased which is just bad science. The article by Brian Merchant is just terrible. I tried reading it and its just slander. The guy touts himself as "Apocalypse spotter, utopianist, science fictionalist." Seriously, this whole article is just a big pile of crap.

Re:Devil's advocate

[war4peace]

Disregard the above, I'm an idiot.

GIVE US THE MONEY!

[0123456]

Says every shakedown artist in every government on the planet.

Re:GIVE US THE MONEY!

[FlyHelicopters]

Yep, more or less...

They really just want money... if that money would actually clean and buy back the prior environment, sure... but it won't...

Since he asked the question

[tomhath]

So should rich countries pay up?

No. The real solution is to lower the birthrate and eventually reduce the world population. Shifting money around wouldn't solve anything.

Re:This is what Climate Change is all about....

[vadim_t]

What's marxist about it? You break somebody's window, you have to pay them for the repairs. You poison somebody else's garden, you pay for having it replanted. This is pure capitalism and the very model libertarians propose.

Discount

[Tablizer]

Don't we get a discount for helping stop Adolf?

Re:Biased reporting

[r1348]

Did you even read the research? China and many Europen nations are also put in the equation.

Re:Biased reporting

[Your.Master]

To be fair, his title was "biased reporting". When the research talks about all nations, and the reporting talks only about the US, that legitimately is biased reporting. Especially when the US doesn't look so extreme compared to the other "climate debt" nations on a per capita basis.

This said, that bias isn't necessarily bad when your audience is from the US. And I say this as somebody who is not from the US, and who went directly to the article to find out how other countries did.

China is a carbon creditor nation? What?

[bmo]

Also: comparing the entire US to individual countries in Europe.

Sorry, but you're talking about smaller populations in individual countries in Europe. If you wanted to compare apples to apples, you'd compare the US to the entirety of Europe since the populations are similar post-War.

The report also compares industrialized countries with non-industrialized countries who are trying like hell to industrialize, like India.

In short, this report does no per-capita analysis /and/ it compares countries that have industrialized with those that haven't gone through that phase fully yet (and lumps the post-1980 industrialization time in china /with/ its previous agrarian economy).

>brazil is a carbon creditor

Yeah, but not when you add in the coal mining and rain-forest stripping.

I am all for reducing pollution and carbon footprints. But the fact that we owe anyone for what went on in the past is nuts, especially to countries that have done the same damn thing or are making efforts to do so. We have been making efforts on pollution ever since the creation of the EPA. To say that the US is a big bad bully when it comes to the environment ignores the other countries that have done the same or are going through their own industrialization process.

I know that this is a schoolyard argument "but the other kid did it too!!" but fingerpointing over who is worse never does anyone any good especially when you go down this road because it becomes circular to the point of absurdity.

It's especially bad when you abuse statistics to do it and frame it as "science."

What is worse is that if I can come up with these criticisms in the time I read that article, the think-tanks for the fucking evil RWNJs disclaiming climate change (it's a fact guys, your insurance company and the Pentagon says it's real, and it's coming out of your pocket - you were saying something about fiscal responsibility, asshole?) will take this and run with it to deep-six any further efforts to reduce pollution, convincing people like Joe The (dumb) Plumber that it's all a conspiracy perpetrated by liberals.

This report is barely worth lining a bird-cage.

--
BMO

Yeah, good luck collecting

[erp_consultant]

4 trillion? Is that all? Why not make it 10 trillion? How much have industrialized countries given poor countries in foreign aid? Loan forgiveness? Accepting millions and millions of their citizens into our countries for better lives. Infrastructure, education, the list goes on.

The reason that many of these countries are poor is because they are run by dictators. Dictators that steal nearly every penny of foreign aid and either put it into their own pocket or use it to beef up the military to ensure that they are not thrown out of power.

Now some of the countries are genuinely poor and need our help. But many others (I'm talking about you, nearly every country on the African continent. And some south east asian countries - Indonesia and Philippines come to mind) are rife with corruption. Their people are poor not through their own fault but directly at the hands of dictators and ruling families.

Just suppose that we did cough up the 4 trillion. What do you suppose would happen? Does this guy really think that somehow, magically, all the people in these countries would be driving BMW's with their kids in boarding schools and a summer place in The Hamptons? Not fucking likely. It would all go into the dictator pockets.

Nice try though.

Re:Go after China

[slew]

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

Re:Biased reporting

[lgw]

"Research", that's funny. This is politics, and only politics.

Re:That's OK, the World ows us 10x that for....

[Anonymous Coward]

1) You didn't spell "Republic" correctly. You're not a democracy.

2) Lots of other countries do that. You're not special in a good way.

3) You're assuming that those things wouldn't have been invented anyway. Television was invented by a Scotsman. The Internal Combustion Engine was developed by a Belgian living in Paris. Should I go on?

4) So you're admitting that you control currencies and ruin markets on a whim?

5) Foreign aid is a loan that must be paid back, so don't brag too much about offering someone a credit card to pay their bills. Many other countries offer disaster relief and so forth, as well - in fact, there were a number of occasions where the US demanded control of the relief military (UN) forces, threw a tantrum when they didn't get control, and just let the bad guys steal all the relief supplies.

6) World War 1 was being fought to a standstill. It likely would have ended before too many more years passed without your intervention anyway.

7) The British were going to defeat German, according to US wargaming. There was no way the Germans could keep it up, regardless of your intervention - and much of your intervention involved the transfer of money. Look up "lend/lease" if you want to see that it wasn't just you guys being heroes. Also, the US didn't fight the Japanese out of any ideal for freedom (just ask the Iraqis how free they felt with the US there, soldiers pointing guns at them screaming "I'M HERE FOR YOUR FUCKING FREEDOM!"), they attacked you.

8) The old Russian empire overthrew itself in 1917, you can't claim ownership of that. As for "liberating the remaining remnants of Europe from being ruled by others" (Department of Redundancy Department, anyone?) what are you talking about? If you keep sniffing that crap, it'll kill you.

9) Two things:
i) Second to none? I interviewed a New Zealand soldier who served in Vietnam. I recall very clearly that he told me "The Green Beret is a mighty soldier, and the New Zealand soldier is every bit as good as they are." For fucks sake, the New Zealand territorials ("weekend soldiers") go for a run while carrying a phone pole. US special forces do that and think they're mighty because of that.

ii) You now start spouting how we're lucky you don't invade us and make us all your slaves. (Panama, anyone?) But you are subjugating the world and making us live under your rules: the New Zealand government has funding and advisors from the US, teaching the government how to implement a special form of freedom that allows us to buy, but restricts our other freedoms. Caught with your hand in the till again. I don't want the US influencing my government, but the money and support they gave the current government has allowed them to get elected. Half the reason you get involved in wars is to keep your military ready and trained, just like the Wehrmacht before World War 2.

So, for the above reasons, don't tell me that you're the greatest and we owe you, because the truth is you only ever act in your self-interest. You've been a power conquering and subverting (UN Security Council veto used more than any other country) everyone else for most of the last 100 years, using the militaries and the poor of your country and others to fight wars to support your own business interests.

Your feeling of having the right to make the rest of the world pay marks you as one of the most blinkered and entitled people in the entire world.

Take your own imaginary debt and go home, or we can start discussing what you owe everyone else from history. Sheltering war criminals from us for your own benefit in a war you're waging against other states simply because it reinforces the wealth of the richest in your country, that's just sickening.

Do us a favour: grow up. A lot.

Re:That's OK, the World ows us 10x that for....

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Nope, already done in the UK well before the US.

2) Yeah, you benefitted from immigration, well done. No debt owed to you for taking people from other places...

3) Wow, no. Airplane is a german invention, assembly line was in most of the industrial revolution, solid state electronics began at Manchester University, Digital electronics at Zurich, integrated circuits all over the place, microprocessors likewise. Petroleum based products? Really? In a story about pollution? Wow. And pharmaceuticals. Those ones you patent and then force poor countries to buy? Yeah, real generous of you. Not.

4) Hah, nope. The reserve currency status is a boon to the US, not the other way around, to the extent that the country seriously lost its shit when places tried to move to the Euro instead.

5) Wow, no. Let me know when you've paid back a tenth of a percent to the countries you took slaves from - they wouldn't need foreign aid if you hadn't fucked them over. Burning your neighbor's house down then renting him a tent isn't charity.

6) Nope again, you came in late after WWI was over, and PROFITED from it.

7) LMFAO. You entered WWII when Japan bombed you, then Germany declared war on you. Not vice versa. Mistakes that were not yours? Seriously?

8) Again, WTF?

9) Come and try it. We have nukes too - we won't win but neither will you. You tried in Vietnam and failed. What makes you think you'd stand a chance against any of the other places? Isn't this just the threat of the bully anyway "You owe me for not beating you up"? Seriously?

You my friend are delusional. Absolutely fucking delusional. Your country murders thousands every year, you invade countries for their oil (Oh right, Iraq had WMD my fucking ass it did!). You're a fucking disgrace. You shit the bed and smear it all over then claim that we should be grateful to you? Fuck right off.