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New Research Says G8 Has Carbon Emission Deficit of 5.5 Trillion
http://english.caijing.com.cn/2009-09-11/110246795.html
The international climate change negotiation is headed towards a critical juncture with the long-awaited climate conference in Copenhagen due to be held in December.
(Caijing.com.cn, by intern Zhu Shaojun and staff writer Li Hujun ) A Chinese research group argues that G8 countries have a carbon emission deficit of US$ 5.5 trillion and the number is expected to climb to US$ 6.3 trillion in 2050.
A Cumulative Methodology
The international climate change negotiation is headed towards a critical juncture with the long-awaited climate conference in Copenhagen due to be held in December. But some Chinese researchers said the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen were fraught with the risk of gridlock over the relevance of historical greenhouse gas emissions.
During the UN Climate Change Conference in Poland last year, He Jiankun, member of the Chinese delegation and expert on low carbon energy, argued the issue of global greenhouse gas emission cuts should be viewed from a perspective of “cumulative carbon dioxide per capita” for the reason that the historically cumulative emissions of developing countries are far less than that of the developed world.
While Ding Zhongli, a geophysist and vice president of Chinese Academy of Sciences, calculated the cumulative carbon dioxide emission per capita of all the countries since 1900 and China’s data for 2005, 24.14 tons, stands far behind that of the developed world in 1960. His paper was published on the recent issue of an academic journal, Science in China Series D:Earth Sciences.
Ding and his colleagues argue that the index of cumulative emission per capita best reflects the key principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol.
Ding said in an interview with a Chinese newspaper Science Times that China needs to express the importance of “cumulative carbon emission per capita”.
Emission Quota for Each Nation
The researchers have also calculated carbon dioxide emission quotas for each country from now to 2050 based on the presumption that the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere is controlled under 470 ppm (parts per million). They then categorized countries or regions in the world with a population over 300,000 into four groups: those with an emission deficit, those that must make an emission reduction, those that must reduce their rate of emission, and those that may proceed at status quo levels.
Developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, along with the world’s major oil exporting countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE, have long exhausted their “emission allowance” according to the report. If each ton of carbon dioxide costs US$ 20, six member countries of G8, including US, UK, Germany, France, Canada and Russia, have accumulated an emission deficit of US$ 5.5 trillion and another US$ 0.8 trillion will be added to it by 2050. China is grouped with other developing countries with a relatively faster economic growth. The researchers stated that for China, the rate of emission must be slowed.
Deep Skepticism Behind G8 Statement
In July, G8 leaders made a statement in Italy, attempting to persuade developing countries to join a push to cut greenhouse emissions by 50 percent by 2050. The deal announced for G8 countries is to reduce their emission by 80 percent by 2050. According to Ding and his colleagues, although it seems that the G8 contribute more to emission reduction by percentage, their declarations have yet to appear balanced to developing countries.
If the year 1990 is taken as the starting point, the G8 carbon dioxide emission per capita will be 146.94 ton by 2050, four times as much as that of other countries. Moreover, up until 1990, the world had already witnessed a G8 cumulative emission per capita 5 times more than the emissions of other countries. The term “other countries” also includes those major emitters as industrialized nations other than the G8 and oil exporting countries, which will leave less emission allowance for the developing countries.
The researchers add that the promised carbon emission cuts by the developed countries should include the reduction to compensate for the past excessive carbon emissions.
They also emphasized that negotiations in the future should change the situation, as they were previously dominated by several developed countries, and that the topics should not just focus on the simple reduction of emissions, but on detailed quotas of each country under certain atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.
Full article in Chinese: http://www.caijing.com.cn/2009-09-07/110241767.html
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