sorting out climate debt

Americans and Chinese are currently arguing at Copenhagen about who should pay for fixing climate change. The assumption is that CO2 is to blame, and the USA makes more than most, so should pay more. Countries should take responsibility for their actions and pay the price if they have taken more than their fair share of resources. But what should we use as a starting point?

We could go back to before the industrial revolution when resource use started rocketing upwards, but since we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors in terms of technological development, that would grossly overcharge those countries that did all the early development when efficiency was low and so was the means to control pollution. How about another date? It turns out there is a nice one to go for.

The world first became officially worried about the environment back in 1968 when the Club of Rome issued its report The Limits to Growth. This report has since been proven too pessimistic of course. (It has a lot in common with the environmentally catastrophic predictions of today's Copenhagen conference. Both largely ignore the positive impacts of progress, while assuming that all the bad things will continue or get worse. But that's another topic.) Anyway, let's take 1968 as a starting point where the world was warned forcefully about population growth and limited resources. That would make as good a point as any at which to start asserting shared responsibility for our world. The fact that it was just before the moon landing adds some weight too, since the moon programme also helped a lot in making us all realise we were all part of the same world and would all share the same fate if we messed it up.

So 1968 could be a good baseline date when we consider the amount of resources used, the pollution made, population loads etc on which to divide up future indebtedness.

Population is easy to deal with. Back in 1968, the US population was 200M and the Chinese population was 774M (the UK was at 55M). The populations have all increased since of course, but all countries were well aware then of the population problem, so own their own responsibility for their growth and its impact. As of course do those countries that have allowed their standards of living to increase without due regard for impacts elsewhere.

Of course we should also consider both good and bad behaviours and contributions, not just abuses. So as well as looking at quantities of pollution, we should also factor in the relative contributions in technological improvement made by the various countries that allow all countries to emit less now. Again, we could use 1968 as the baseline and create a retrospective 'development credit' trading scheme where countries that are able to buy more sophisticated technology now should offset the costs to those countries that contributed to its development. It would not be fair to penalise them for their entire CO2 contributions, when part of them were generated in companies developing advanced technology for everyone.

We also need to define an endpoint before we can start doing the calculations. CO2 allegedly stays in the atmosphere and contributes to warming for hundreds of years, so we must also take into account the emissions from the predicted future populations of each country too for that duration. Here again, a notional development trading scheme will allow countries that emit a lot to offset against that their contributions in kind via advanced technology. Some of this technology such as development of electric vehicles or efficient solar energy might be key to saving the environment from catastrophe, and it is reasonable that its development should be rewarded in increased allowances elsewhere.

But then we have a final factor in the equation for which it is much harder to determine a fair baseline. People are distributed all over the world. Some live in deserts, others in cold regions, some in low-lying coastal regions. People in deserts may be affected severely if rainfall drops even further, people in coastal regions affected if sea level rises. But people in cold regions have much higher costs for heating, so need to use a lot of energy to stay comfortable. People don't choose where they are born, nor are they free to move to anywhere they choose. Some are born in wealthy countries, others in poor ones, some in warm areas, others in cold ones. Valuable resources are spread unevenly too. Life is unfair from the moment of conception. But there has been no agreement or consent yet to make it fair. Hopefully one day we will assign a universal right to standard of living to which everyone on the planet can claim entitlement, but it is still a long way off. But we have to pick a baseline somewhere. So maybe this a good place to start.

If people can't choose where to live, they cannot be held responsible for the environmental costs of living there, but we still need to pick a baseline that anyone should be able to aspire to, and basic comfort is a good one. We can't insist on luxury when others are having to pay the price, but we can insist that it is every person's right to have shelter, warmth, food and water. If they have to chop a tree down and burn its wood to keep warm, we can hardly complain. The same applies to clearing a bit of forest to grow food. If they were born into a situation that needs them to do so to live with reasonable comfort, then fine. If we want them to do differently, then we have to ensure that we help them with the resources required. I think this is a good baseline. Everyone should be entitled to basic comfort, then we can distribute the rights to luxuries on top of that as the earth and technology permits.

So at this point we could start writing out an equation, though agreeing the values of some of the factors will still be tough. Each country should be entitled to a share of the world's resources and pollution capacity according to:

(their 1968 population) x (the local environmental carbon cost of living in reasonable comfort) x 200 + (their country's contribution to technology that allows people everywhere to achieve that standard at lower environmental cost, integrated over the period from 1968 to 2210)

With such an equation, because it was possible to pick a baseline date for the beginning of environmental responsibility, it is not necessary to factor in population growth, even though much bigger future populations will obviously make much bigger environmental impacts.

I will make no attempt here to compare the likely results for the different countries, but I would bet it will have little in common with the more politicised negotiations at Copenhagen. The USA will still come off badly because of their expensive lifestyles, but once technology contributions are factored in, it might not look so bad. Environmentalists often overlook that bit, but it is important to give credit where it is due.