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Comment by shawndrost | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty rational of them (and arguably, morally upright): emissions-per-capita is caused by a high standard of living (barring a few confounding factors), and industrialized nations are asking China to restrict themselves to a much lower emissions-per-capita than we are targeting ourselves.

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The only deal anyone is really talking about is reduction in emissions based on 1990 (or perhaps some other date) levels. Rich countries make faster, deeper cuts and subsidize cuts in poor countries. Pretty much any variations are within that framework.

I think there is also a perceived unfairness or indignation surrounding the issues. Depending on how you present things, it's always possible to present you country as getting screwed. There are always those whos agenda (which might even be legit) it serves to tell people they are being screwed.

In every country in the world there are powerful people going around with that message.

Rich Countries:

  * You are expected to make emitting carbon more expensive here then it is in other countries. That means that steel mills, factories & the like will shut down & reopened in China. Jobs will be shipped overseas(embellishment) No emissions are prevented since the factory gets reopened in India/China anyway.

  * This is a plan to tax US/EU suppliers a& transfer this money to China/India.

Poor Countries:

  * You are expected to pay for the problems created by those countries with over 100 years of industrialized history. 

  * Going by 1990 levels means dividing a world environmental resource. Since we were polluting 1/5 as much as US/EU in 1990, we get a smaller slice in the future. (related) This deal means that whoever polluted in the past is entitled to polluted in the future.  

  *There is a known quantity (whatever it takes to get from 380 to 450 ppm) of carbon we can emmit globally. Divide that by 6 billion.

Each one of these arguments is true in a way.

HN wraps blocks that are prefixed with 2+ spaces in <pre><code> tags so, you'll probably want to word-wrap things yourself.

Per capita aside, they've already passed us in emissions-per-GDP.

Just saying.

The emissions-per-GDP is probably closely related to technological development and energy efficiency. (At least it seems that way looking at the wikipedia list posted, the top countries are all 3rd world nations while for example the UAE is near the bottom.) So, I don't think they've passed the US, I think they've never been below.

This is referred to as Carbon Intensity. The problem is that China is less developed than the USA and therefore has a higher carbon intensity.

But the government promised to lower it by 40 percent by 2020.

Source, details, explanation? (Genuinely curious.)

You might want to have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_G...

I never saw what actual per-capita emissions were on the table. Did they really want the developing nations to stay at a lower value indefinitely?

Yes. That is pretty much the only kind of deal that gets talked about.

The discussion is always about cutting or freezing. Sometimes it's about slowing growth, then freezing then cutting.

The "inequality" of the deal will allow developing countries to get a little closer to developed country per capita emissions, but overall proportions are supposed to remain prety much fixed. So, if China currently emits 4.5 X US per capita, that may become 3 X at some point. It will never be 1=1.

The reason for this is pragmatic. Demanding the developed countries cut till they reach China levels while China continues to grow emissions will take too long.

{edit} I forgot to mention the other non pragmatic approach that some see as fair. Developing countries should be allowed to continue emitting carbon until their historical effect on atmospheric carbon equals that of the west. This solution locks in catastrophe at some point. (I fee like I need to qualify these sentences with "If the assumptions about climate change are close to correct")

Re: "if China currently emits 4.5 X US per capita..." US per capita emissions is way higher than China's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...

Sorry. backwards

Thanks for that info. Do you have any references where this was talked about?

We did a small project about future predictions for energy use and CO2 emissions in college in 1995, and we ended with a statement that essentially said "Now, this has all been about global emissions. How to divide these issues by country is a moral, not scientific, question, but it's hard to argue that anything but asymptotically (ie at 2050 or whatever) working towards the same per-capita emissions is just."

I wish all political discussions were on a per-capita basis. It would just be more transparent how different the industrialized countries want their citizens to be treated that way.

Your ratio is approximately back-to-front. In 2007, the per-capita emissions for the US were 19.1 Metric tons to China's 4.6 Metric tons. http://www.iea.org/co2highlights

Kudos for bringing this up. Saul Griffith also weighs in quite reasonably on this issue:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/01/energy-literacy-4-ho.ht...

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