Climate Debt Relief

It is 15 years since China surpassed the USA to become the largest carbon emitter in the world. They now emit twice as much carbon as the US every year, and account for over a quarter of global emissions. India and Russia are comfortably in 3rd and 4th place, emitting more than Europe. Brazil is in 7th, Iran 8th, Indonesia 10th, Mexico 11th...

Even per capita, the lines have blurred. China emits more per capita than the UK. Russia exceeds Germany. Turkey beats France. South Africa trounces Italy. Iran trumps Poland. The Arab States out-smoke the US, Canada and Australia...

"Ah, but..." says the developing-world grievance-peddler, "you have to take account of centuries of emissions since the Industrial Revolution. Cumulatively, the West is still responsible for vastly more emissions than the rest of the world, and should accept most of the responsibility for climate change. It is their climate debt." A certain type of self-loathing Westerner (found most often in the social-science and humanities departments of our universities, or infecting young minds in our schools) claps in agreement. Whatever burden Western governments put on their people is never enough to assuage their white guilt or racial resentment.

Reason plays little part in their thinking. Evidence is unlikely to change their opinion. But for everyone else: is this justified?

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In the 30 years to 2017, China emitted as much carbon dioxide as the West emitted from the start of the Industrial Revolution until 1947, or the USA emitted from its foundation until 1960.

We should also take account of the fact that carbon dioxide has a half-life in the atmosphere, as it is gradually absorbed back into the biosphere. That carbon dioxide emitted by the West upto 1947 or by the USA upto 1960 has a much smaller effect on our climate than the equivalent amount emitted by China in the last 30 years — around 1/7 of the effect, in fact.

If we allow for this decay pattern, how much of the West's emissions has an equal effect to China's emissions of the last 30 years?

• Everything upto around 2007, in the case of the USA.
• Everything upto around 1991, in the case of the West.

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The gap between the current impact of the cumulative emissions across time of China and the USA was small enough (32,688 MtCO2e) in 2017, and the discrepancy between their current emissions (c.6,500 MtCO2e) is large enough that it seems likely that China will overtake the USA around the end of 2022.

I think it's fair to say that China has fully caught up! The West has been paying down its climate debt for years, while China has been racking it up.

You can't blame developing-nation governments for playing the climate game as well as they can. They still have plenty of poverty. If they can persuade the West to engage in further bouts of self-flagellation ahead of their own deferred efforts, they are acting in the best short-term interests of their citizens.

It's up to Western governments to do the maths and say no, protecting their citizens' short-term interests as strongly as their poorer rivals do. But we won't do that, because our elites are racked with guilt for their privilege, but conscious only of their privilege as it relates to foreigners, and not as it relates to their less-privileged compatriots. A lot of those compatriots are white, and therefore (according to Western elites) hugely privileged. They are guilty by definition for the sins of their fathers, and their fathers are guilty by race-association for whatever crimes we might anachronistically accuse them of.