A proposal to set international carbon-reduction targets based on the distribution of one billion "high emitters" in both developed and developing countries
Douglas Fischer, Scientific American 6 Jul 09;
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.
A new 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.
"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 Proceeds 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.
The analysis, "Sharing global CO2 emissions reductions among one billion high emitters," by a group of Princeton University researchers, proposes spreading responsibility for reductions among individuals rather than countries.
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.
Overall, the researchers found that the United States and China would have the largest carbon dioxide reduction targets, while Russia, India, the Middle East, South Africa and north Africa would all have sizable targets, due to their energy industries.
The proposal also sets a floor for the 3 billion people predicted by 2030 to be emitting less than one ton of carbon dioxide a year. Those people - the poorest of the poor - should focus solely on bettering their lifestyles, and they should do so via any economical means, the authors say.
They can safely come up to one-ton-a-year emissions target without breaking the global carbon bank.
It is folly, in other words, to light 10 villages via solar power when the same money could equip 100 villages with diesel-powered generators, Socolow said.
"There's no reason people at that level have to meet carbon goals," he said. "It starts with the high emitters."
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The plan is being hailed by many climate experts for this inherent fairness: Industrialized countries bear the brunt of the labor, as those nations have the most residents living above any carbon line. But many nations in the developing world would also have to take some action as their citizenry prospers and begins to enjoy a more carbon-intensive lifestyle.
"Developing countries want attention to fairness," Socolow added. "We can talk about fairness in a way that is defensible in the minds of the high per-capita (emitting) countries.
"It's mischievous, but it's meant to be a log-jam-breaking concept."
Indeed, perhaps the most striking aspect of the study, said several climate experts familiar with it, is that by 2030 the world's one billion highest emitters will be spread evenly across four major economic regions of the globe: the United States; the industrialized world minus the U.S.; China; and the developing world minus China.
Plan floated to target individual carbon emitters
Yahoo News 7 Jul 09;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US researchers have proposed a new strategy to tackle the global climate dilemma: target the biggest polluters in a country, who also tend to be the wealthiest individuals.
Under the framework, a universal cap -- rather than different caps for different countries -- would be placed on carbon emissions and countries would then be tasked with getting individuals living beyond that cap to reduce their carbon footprint.
"Most of the world's emissions come disproportionately from the wealthy citizens of the world, irrespective of their nationality," said lead author Shoibal Chakravarty, a research scholar at the Princeton Environmental Institute.
"We estimate that in 2008, half of the world's emissions came from just 700 million people," he added, noting that many emissions owe to lifestyles that involve airplane flights, car use and the heating and cooling of large homes.
The plan, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, proposes to use national income distribution data for each individual country in order to estimate how carbon emissions are shared out among individuals.
After estimating global carbon emissions, the researchers proposed a rule to derive a universal cap on global individual emissions and determine corresponding limits.
The study did not say how the countries would implement the plan, although it noted that "a well-designed national policy would contain costs and not exacerbate inequalities."
About half of global greenhouse gas emissions come from less than a billion of the world's inhabitants, the researchers noted in explaining the logic behind their approach.
"Our proposal moves beyond per capita considerations to identify the world's high-emitting individuals, who are present in all countries," the University of Princeton research team wrote in its study.
The Kyoto Protocol, the current carbon-capping pact, charges rich countries with cutting most of the emissions while developing countries, including rapidly-developing China and India, are not required to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming.
The researchers said they hope their approach will garner the support of rich and poor countries less than six months before key UN climate change talks in Copenhagen.
As an example, they said that if global leaders set a target to maintain carbon emissions in 2030 at today's levels, no individual could emit more than 11 tons (10 tonnes) of carbon per year.
According to the projections, 1.13 billion people would be above the cap out of an estimated 8.1 billion-strong world population in 2030.
Each individual now emits a global average of five tons (4.5 tonnes) of carbon dioxide each year. Each European emits about 10 tons (nine tonnes) annually, while each American produces twice that amount, according to the study.
The researchers noted that some existing strategies based on energy use are considered unfair because they conceal the emissions of wealthy major polluters.
Allocating responsibility for carbon emissions has been the thorniest issue confronting negotiations between developed and developing countries ahead of the UN conference in December, which aims to strike a new global warming pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.
New climate strategy: track the world's wealthiest
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters 6 Jul 09;
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - To fairly divide the climate change fight between rich and poor, a new study suggests basing targets for emission cuts on the number of wealthy people, who are also the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, in a country.
Since about half the planet's climate-warming emissions come from less than a billion of its people, it makes sense to follow these rich folks when setting national targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the authors wrote on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As it stands now, under the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol, rich countries shoulder most of the burden for cutting the emissions that spur global warming, while developing countries -- including fast-growing economies China and India -- are not required to curb greenhouse pollution.
Rich countries, notably the United States, have said this gives developing countries an unfair economic advantage; China, India and other developing countries argue that developed countries have historically spewed more climate-warming gases, and developing countries need time to catch up.
The study suggests setting a uniform international cap on how much carbon dioxide each person could emit in order to limit global emissions; since rich people emit more, they are the ones likely to reach or exceed this cap, whether they live in a rich country or a poor one.
For example, if world leaders agree to keep carbon emissions in 2030 at the same level they are now, no one person's emissions could exceed 11 tons of carbon each year. That means there would be about a billion "high emitters" in 2030 out of a projected world population of 8.1 billion.
EACH PERSON'S EMISSIONS
By counting the emissions of all the individuals likely to exceed this level, world leaders could provide target emissions cuts for each country. Currently, the world average for individual annual carbon emissions is about 5 tons; each European produces 10 tons and each American produces 20 tons.
With international climate talks set to start this week in Italy among the countries that pollute the most, the authors hope policymakers will look at the strong link between how rich people are and how much carbon dioxide they emit.
"You're distributing the task of doing something about emissions reduction based on the proportion of the population in the country that's actually doing the most damage," said Shoibal Chakravarty of the Princeton Environment Institute, one of the study's authors.
Rich people's lives tend to give off more greenhouse gases because they drive more fossil-fueled vehicles, travel frequently by air and live in big houses that take more fuel to heat and cool.
By focusing on rich people everywhere, rather than rich countries and poor ones, the system of setting carbon-cutting targets based on the number of wealthy individuals in various countries would ease developing countries into any new climate change framework, Chakravarty said by telephone.
"As countries develop -- India, China, Brazil and others -- over time, they'll have more and more of these (wealthy) individuals and they'll have a higher share of carbon reductions to do in the future," he said.
These obligations, based on the increasing number of rich people in various countries, would kick in as each developing country hit a certain overall level of carbon emissions. This level would be set fairly high, so that economic development would not be hampered in the poorest countries, no matter how many rich people live there.
Is this a limousine-and-yacht tax on the rich? Not necessarily, Chakravarty said, but he did not rule it out: "We are not by any means proposing that. If some country finds a way of doing that, it's great."
This week's climate talks in Italy are a prelude to an international forum in December in Copenhagen aimed at crafting an agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. At the same time, the U.S. Congress is working on legislation to curb U.S. carbon emissions.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
