Addressing the rich-poor emissions divide | The Daily Climate
From the article, "Proposal aims to slice through rich-poor divide on global emissions targets," by Daily Climate editor Douglas Fischer:
A new framework for reducing carbon emissions takes a crack at the knottiest dilemma confronting a global climate solution: how to divvy cuts between rich and poor nations.
The study, published Monday, attempts to sidestep the rancor, finding that virtually every country has a class of individuals – the so-called "high emitters" - enjoying a rich, carbon-intensive lifestyle. If those individuals, no matter their locale, are forced to take responsibility for their emissions, a great swath of countries become participants in the climate effort, the study claims.
The rich should lead, but the rich can't get domestic legislation enacted until they can level the playing field.
"Rich people in poor countries shouldn't be able to hide behind the poor people in those countries," said Robert Socolow, co-director of Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative and a co-author of the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The problem has dominated talks leading to December's Copenhagen negotiations on a post-Kyoto accord. Developing nations expect the industrialized world to do the heavy lifting on emissions cuts; industrialized countries, noting that the developing world will account for upwards of 97 percent of future emissions growth, want assurances that such growth will be curbed. ...
Under this framework, the international community would draw a single, global line for carbon emissions. Countries would then be responsible for reducing the carbon footprint of individuals living above that line. Emissions from individuals living below the line do not factor into the accounting.
From the [Chakravarty, Chikkatur, de Coninck, Pacala, Socolow, Tavoni] paper, "Sharing global CO2 emission reductions among one billion high emitters":
Our scheme can be viewed as a step toward allocation on the basis of equal per capita emission rights, but we do not get there in one step. We take into account high emitters above a global cap and low emitters below a global floor, but there is a gap between the cap and the floor. Further application of the underlying principles proposed here would bring about successive reductions of the high-emitter cap and increases of the emission floor, until eventually they converge.
This approach also has features in common with the Greenhouse Development Rights proposal. Hat tip: P+T.
