David Satterthwaite: Population and Climate
David Satterthwaite is a senior fellow with the International Institute for Environment and Development. From the recent paper, "The implications of population growth and urbanization for climate change," which is available for free pdf download:
One obvious objection to using the production perspective [for calculating emissions, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does -ed.] is that a large proportion of the products of rural-based mines, forests, agriculture and land use changes are to serve production or consumption needs in urban areas, so it is misleading to allocate these to rural areas (or rural populations). ...
So perhaps up to one-sixth of the world’s population has incomes and consumption levels that are so low that they are best not included in allocations of responsibility for GHG emissions. ...
Thus, the much-used formula of I = P*A*T (impact relating to population, affl uence and technology) should be I = C*A*T when applied to global warming impacts, with C being the number of consumers, not the number of people. ...
In addition, it is not fair to equate increases in GHG emissions per person among low-income populations (say from 0.1 to 0.5 tonnes of CO2e per person per year(17)) with comparable GHG increases among highincome populations (for instance, from 7.1 to 7.5 tonnes per person per year). The reduction in global emissions to avoid dangerous climate change depends on achieving a particular global average for emissions per person – what is sometimes termed the “fair share” level, which is generally set at around two tonnes of CO2e per person. Making provision for increases in GHG emissions for those people below the “fair share” level so that they can move out of what might be termed “energy poverty” cannot be considered in the same light
