Let's blame India and China

On October 30th, a review on the Economics of Climate Change sponsored by HM Treasury and written by Lord Stern has grabbed significant front-page headlines. You can read this report here.

Anyway, what it says is quite important - because the conclusion, for the first time, is not whether climate change and global warming are occuring, but that climate change is indeed real, and at a pace which is heading towards irreversibility.

Of course when a report comes out like this, there are still plenty of skeptics and lots of naysayers who would refuse to believe the numbers until of course their own beachside house in Florida Keys washes away.

But what really behooves me, is to start reading unresearched and blatantly incorrect commentary from these people, and even worse - news sources trying to convince others that a) the conclusion is wrong and b) it's the developing world's fault anyway.

Well let's set the record straight. Below are several links from international studies showing CO2 emissions by country. Sure, China and India are definitely contributors, but it is the western countries that by far need to accept most of the blame and truly change their own behaviour.

According to a UN study in 2002, ordered by top polluter here:

United States, 5,844,042 (thousands of metric tons)
China, 3,263,103
India, 1,220,926

This image from the UK National Energy Foundation, shows the picture even better. It indicates CO2 emissions per person, (dated 2000)


See those big gray areas - those are your top polluters. Sure, this is 2006 and this map is from 2000, and India and China surely are contributing more than they were. But all that shows to me is how long the US and Australia have gotten away with bad emissions. They've done it for decades.

But that's not the end of the blame game. Part of the fallout from the Iraq war and troubles in the mideast in the last year is the price of Oil rising to a new high. In August, 2005, a barrel of crude hit $62 (USD).

Who were western consumers and the news sources quick to blame? China and India.

Well, by the CIA's own account, both the Chinese and Indians have a long way to go to catch up to the US. I mean the US consumption of 20,030,000 bbl/day is actually 2 times as much as China (6,391,000) and India (2,320,000) combined.


So let's give the rhetoric a rest, and stop attacking developing nations. The US is the biggest CO2 emitter in the world, and consumes more natural resources than any other country in the world. They continue to argue they can't afford the economic cost of reducing emissions, but then again, they're able to spend billions of dollars on more important things.