It’s a popular exercise to demonstrate a political will and a commitment to a human rights future of democracy and justice when it comes to climate change by many worthy nations, but seldom these aspirations are more than greenwash and PR for the edification of voters and leaders alike. Take for example the great nation of Canada.
Canada, recently announced it was pulling out of the Kyoto protocol, the first global treaty on climate change, the first phase of which expires next year but the conference of nations has chosen to extend beyond 2012. By way of explanation, Canada’s environment minister pointed out that the Kyoto protocol does not cover the world’s largest two carbon emitters and therefore Canada will not be bound by the pledges it had made when it joined the Kyoto protocol a few years back.
What? & Why?
Canada says this is because America did not ratify the agreement, and China which ratified Kyoto but as a developing country is exempt from Co2 emission reductions, are responsible for more than 41% of the world’s CO2 emissions combined. Between 1990 and 2009, China’s emissions increased by over 200% and America’s by 6.7%. But Canada’s carbon emissions have also increased, by over 20% in the same period, far from its Kyoto target of a 6% reduction.
Yet a certain debate arises because upon the principles of human rights, every human is equal, and CO2 emission figures ought to be charted by per capita values, regardless of what is their nationality. This in order to not institutionalize the bias of developed wealthy nations vs the underdeveloped poorer nations in climate change adaptation…
So maybe we should look at a per capita carbon emission as a fair way of comparing the various countries. This seems to satisfy the human rights aspect of international carbon policy. So here is a list of countries ranked by carbon dioxide emissions per capita: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissio… US ranks 12th, Canada ranks 15th, Australia ranks 11th, China ranks 78th and so on…
Still China’s CO2 emmissions are indeed lower than Canada’s on a ‘per person’ basis, but a more meaningful ratio maybe the comparison of pollution to economic output. And on that basis it’s clear China pollutes much more. For the same amount of GDP ($1 trillion) Canada emits 325 million tonnes of CO2 and China emits 1,185 million tonnes of CO2. That’s carbon capital intensity and it’s a fair way to measure these things.
On the one hand we have Canada’s claim to fame being the tar sands legacy of fouling the planet massively for economic gain and in the back of their mind hoping that the global warming will have some benefits for the country’s agriculture too. So they are backpedaling seriously on all environmental issues and are acting like climate criminals, completely unconcerned with the other people’s plight around the world when they throw the hand grenade aiming to destroy the Kyoto protocol.
On the other hand, China has the world’s most ambitious plan to develop clean and renewable energy, and has taken proactive steps toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
China will add 180 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar photovoltaic capacity in the next 25 years under its new policies scenario — a total close to the rest of the world’s combined current capacity.
Labeled one of the world’s largest sources of emissions, China began its industrialization within the past 100 years and only sped it up in the past 30 years, leading to fast CO2 emissions growth. Still China is trying to improve its energy efficiency to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
China reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5 billion tonnes between 2006 and 2010, the greatest reduction of any country during the five-year period, according to the report on China’s low-carbon development published by the Social Sciences Academic Press at the end of November.
China has accomplished its energy conservation goals listed in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010): the aggregate energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped 19.1 percent from that of 2005, which is equivalent to a reduction of 1.46 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions.
According to the paper, which is titled “China’s Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change,” by 2015, China aims to reduce its CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 17 percent and energy consumption per unit of GDP by 16 percent compared to the levels in 2010.
Despite China’s efforts in addressing climate change, the nation and other developing countries are receiving little funding and transfers of technology from developed countries.
At the 2010 UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, industrial nations agreed to provide 30 billion U.S. dollars in start-up funds between 2010 and 2012, and 100 billion U.S. dollars annually by 2020 to help developing countries tackle climate change. But the promise of 30 billion US dollars and of the later amounts has not been kept, partially due to sluggish growth in developed economies, and partly due to inconclusive climate aid deals, as evidenced in the ongoing UN Climate Change Conference and spelled out in the Durban resolution.
Under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which is a cornerstone of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developed countries have pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide funding and technology to help developing countries address climate change.
Industrialized countries have consumed a large amount of resources from developing countries since the Industrial Revolution. They built economic power and left developing countries in poverty…
It is remarkable that emissions reduction in developing countries accounts for more than 60 percent of the world’s total, as they are trying to balance economic development and greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
In comparison, developed countries have easily cut emissions due to the financial crises and economic downturns. The EU set a target of reducing emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and statistics show the EU is half-way toward meeting this goal due to its financial crisis but not due to the necessity of development for basic people’s access to electricity as might be the case in the developing world.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
The real comparison is the resource burning and exporting too.
And on that front Canada sucks much more than any other nation mainly because of the tar sands and it’s keen destruction of the permafrost through global warming and the unintended methane releases which are a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. After all Canada is one of the biggest exporters of fossil fuels and has burnable resources comparable only to Saudi Arabia…
China by comparison has very little burnable resources and consequently is not a fossil fuel exporter but an importer and thus has a clear vested interest in reducing the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable energies. And that it does, by building a wind park and a solar park every other day as we speak…
