Climate Change? Nahhh ...

"Fair share" is subjective, and I hate their particular "historical emissions" way of trying to tell people what is fair. What somebody did in 1879 or 1932 or 1961 before I was born should have no bearing on my supposed responsibilities to the world. What happened in 1989 before someone who is 21 today, shouldn't heap a cost on that person. Should someone who say immigrated here within the last year from a poor place in the world be burdened with the cost, when using the same logic you could argue that they have lived their whole lives in a country that contributed less to CO2 emissions over time (so shouldn't that person's particular "fair share" be less)?

We live in a global world TODAY, and this is a global problem. It's counterproductive to go back and try to parse history (from people who had nothing to do with that history) and assign costs (or reparations if that is the point) based on that supposed history. There is no definitive way to know who benefited from those CO2 emissions. Let's say Ford (A U.S. company) emitted gases into the atmosphere in 1955, building a car that was sold in France. Does the fair share (for the benefit of that emission) remand to the U.S. or does it to remand to France because a guy in a beret was driving around in the car?

Few people had any concerns about the emissions that were happening for around 150 years of the history they are using to assign costs after the fact. That's because in 1932, nobody had a handle on the cumulative effect what they were doing would have on the future. Trying to go back in 2022 to collect a fee of based on a behavior back then isn't right. When you pay a cost like that, it should be based on you knowing what the cost is for at that moment in time and choosing to incur it. If they came to you today and said, "Hey, your electric bill in August of 1993 was $X, but you need to pay up another $Y now (even though the bill was settled at the time). ..." would you be cool with it?

The whole $100 billion "climate finance" objective that the UN came up with may have just been wasted money in the first place, because there is no evidence that doing wealth transfers from wealthier countries to poorer countries will (or has had) have any impact on the climate change we are seeing. Even if that could be an effective way of dealing, $100 billion is clearly nothing relative to the problem. The approach would require trillions of dollars flowing from developed nations to undeveloped nations, and it's just ridiculous to expect people in the U.S. to hand over their wealth that way. Even at $100 billion, the countries that were slapping themselves on the back when the whole thing was announced have already broken their promises. It's unserious stuff.

 

Not sure who you think is guilting whom. The US and UK voluntarily signed onto the UN climate finance commitment.

The story @Azrael linked to was based on something Carbon Brief does on its website. Carbon Brief is an independent website that does investigative journalism and data visualization with regard to climate change. Is the US or UK really all that influenced by Carbon Brief?

 

I agree that the UN conferences are feckless -- the way just about everything the U.N. is behind is.

As for that piece you linked to, despite his certainty (discussion ended!), that math is not simple. Even if he really can tell me how much carbon every single country has emitted over time, the assumed benefit of those emissions may not have entirely accrued to the country that emitted the gases. Let's say that next month China burns a ton of coal running factories that produce hundreds of billions of dollars of cheap goods that meet demand coming from the United States. Does China owe everyone money? Or is it the U.S.? Or does the Greek shipping company that brought the goods here, making it a debt that Greece now owes?

For most of the period the "historical emissions" covers, the U.S. was a huge net exporter to the world. We weren't just producing manufactured goods for ourselves. We were emitting gases in manufacturing facilities and factories to produce goods that the rest of the world benefitted from, too. This was true from around the 1880s till the 1970s (roughly). Why shouldn't the countries that benefited from those emissions (they were demanding the goods) owe a debt rather than the U.S.?

That piece starts with a flawed premise and then glides right through it like it settled a question about who is responsible for where we are today. It's not that simplistic for me.