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Who should pay to fix our warming planet?
Global leaders are gathering in Dubai for COP28, the 28th annual United Nations climate summit, starting tomorrow through Dec. 12. But before the meeting even begins, I can already tell you one thing: Just like every COP that came before it, COP28 will fail to resolve the central debate on “solving” climate change.
At the heart of this failure lies a trillion-dollar roadblock: disagreement between developed and developing countries over who’s to blame for the problem – and who should foot the bill to fix it. The US and Europe blame Chinese and Indian coal plants and call for their immediate phase-down. China and developing countries blame the West’s historical emissions and insist on compensation for their mitigation and adaptation efforts. Africans and Indians assert their right to develop their economies as Westerners did. Vulnerable nations demand reparations to cope with the harmful consequences of the global warming that’s already baked in. Neither side wants to make concessions.
While they bicker, the planet is cooking. Cumulative emissions since 1850 – when humans started burning fossil fuels at scale – have already caused global temperatures to increase by about 1.2 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial levels. Scientists believe we have nearly reached the point where limiting the planet’s temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (and therefore the most extreme consequences of climate change) becomes physically – not just politically or economically – impossible. 2023 will be the hottest year on record, and climate-related extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and heat waves are becoming more frequent and deadlier.
The good news is that we’re already moving in the right direction thanks to technological advancement, demographic changes, and market and geopolitical incentives. Looking out two or three generations from now, the global energy complex will be almost entirely post-carbon: renewable, cheap, decentralized, and abundant.
The bad news is that decarbonization is not happening fast enough to get there sooner. And unless developed and developing nations can bridge the climate finance gap, the path to global warming below 2 degrees Celsius – let alone 1.5 degrees, the current goal – will remain out of grasp. This puts the debate over equity and burden-sharing squarely at the heart of the planet’s ability to curb climate change.
So, who’s right? Who’s wrong? And what will it take to break the stalemate?
Climate justice by the numbers
Carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere. Unlike shorter-lived greenhouse gases such as methane, CO2 doesn’t go away – at least not on a human timescale. This means that all the carbon that we’ve pumped into the air in the past is still heating the planet today and will continue to do so in the future. And because CO2 is a “well-mixed” gas, it doesn’t matter where or by whom it is emitted. Whether caused by an LA traffic jam in 1999 or a Mongolian coal plant last Tuesday, it’s all the same to the atmosphere – and it’s all still up there.
In total, we have released roughly 2,500 gigatons of CO2 (GtCO2) into the atmosphere, mostly in the last 40 years. The United States is responsible for about 25% of cumulative emissions, while Europe (the 27 members of the European Union plus the United Kingdom) contributed 22%. China comes in third with nearly 15% of historical emissions. Many of today’s largest emitters such as India and Brazil have not contributed significantly to global cumulative emissions, with 3% and 1%, respectively. The whole African continent is responsible for less than 3% of historical emissions.
Adjusting for population size, the US has burned almost eight times more carbon per capita than China and over 25 times more than India. This makes it clear that Americans (and, to a lesser extent, other Westerners) are disproportionately responsible for causing climate change.
But while the US is historically responsible for more global warming than any other country, it is no longer the world’s largest polluter. China surpassed it in 2006, and its annual emissions are now more than double America’s and over one-quarter of the global total. India will pass the EU in the short term and the US in the medium term. And even as emissions in the industrialized world have been declining for over a decade, they are still growing in developing countries, which account for two-thirds of global emissions.
Yes, the average American still burns more than twice as much carbon as the average Chinese and 10 times as much as the average Indian. That’s pretty unfair. Not only did rich countries get rich by burning fossil fuels – we are also able to maintain living standards other countries can’t even dream of by continuing to burn much more than them. But just as the atmosphere doesn’t care about where or when carbon gets burned, it also doesn’t care about fairness.
‘Fair’ is off the table
In order to have an even chance of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, scientists estimate that cumulative CO2 emissions cannot exceed 2,900 GtCO2. That’s our carbon budget. The problem is we’ve already used up most of it, meaning global emissions would have to go down by 43% by 2030 to stay on budget – a nearly 10% reduction every year from now until then (for reference, the COVID-19 pandemic caused only a 6% reduction in global emissions in 2020).
Putting aside the question of whether this is even physically possible, who should bear the brunt of this burden?
The obvious answer is developed countries. Most developing countries are well within their fair share of the carbon budget relative to their population size. Conversely, the US and other wealthy nations have long since exceeded their fair share, such that even if they reach net zero by 2050 (a big if), their emissions will still overshoot their fair share by three or four times. In fact, Americans used up their fair share of the carbon budget in 1944 (!). Whatever little budget space remains belongs entirely to developing nations.
Beyond the fact that they’ve been living on borrowed emissions since D-Day, there’s another compelling reason why rich countries should be expected to do more than poorer nations to curb climate change: They can. Developed nations are, well, developed, so they have more than enough resources to meet their citizens’ needs already (even if these are unevenly distributed). That means that they can afford to engage in aggressive decarbonization without compromising their economic development. By contrast, for developing countries, paying for decarbonization out-of-pocket at the needed pace would require condemning much of their population to poverty.
Expecting wealthy nations to take on more than poor ones is not just about retribution, then. It’s also about not depriving billions of people of the right to develop – a right that industrialized countries exercise to this day. Had rich countries not emitted (so much) more than their share, developing nations would have plenty of room left to develop like industrialized nations did.
What it’ll take
Unless scientists figure out a way to suck carbon out of the air at scale, the only way that the world can ever reach net zero is if all countries – poor and rich alike – reach net zero. Forget right and wrong – that’s simple math.
So, to answer the earlier question: Should developing nations pay for the sins of much wealthier countries? Absolutely not. Must they? Barring a breakthrough in negative emissions technologies, unfortunately yes. They cannot pursue the fossil-fueled path to development rich countries enjoyed and keep the planet from warming much further.
But for developing nations to ever agree to get on board with the program, industrialized countries will first have to credibly commit to doing four things in return. First, accelerate their own decarbonization to maximize the carbon budget available to the rest of the world. Second, invest whatever it takes to develop and deploy technologies that exponentially reduce the cost of decarbonization abroad. Third, aggressively fund the large upfront costs of decarbonization and adaptation in developing countries. And fourth, compensate vulnerable nations for the losses and damages they’re already experiencing due to climate change they didn’t cause.
Mustering the political will to make these things happen in wealthy nations is a huge challenge. We have consistently failed to meet our 2009 promise to shuttle $100 billion a year in climate finance to the developing world by 2020, a puny amount compared to the estimated $1 trillion price tag to decarbonize emerging economies. We are also still off-track to meet our own decarbonization goals. If we want developing countries to pony up, there can be no more empty promises and unmet pledges.
Unless we’re willing to put our money where our mouths are, we’re going to see not 1.5 C warming, not even 2 C, but rather closer to the 2.7 C the planet is currently on pace for – not an existential scenario for life on Earth, but certainly a life-changing one for billions of people around the world and especially in the Global South. We need to do better.
COP28 climate talks complicated by UAE oil deals
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Will the UAE’s pursuit of oil deals during COP28 undermine the summit's climate goals?
Well, it certainly doesn't make it any easier. I mean, this is the time when the world comes together and tries to reduce the level of carbon in the atmosphere, and the fact that it's being hosted by one of the world's largest oil producers and by the chairman, the CEO of one of the world's largest oil companies, who also is driving his country's sustainability goals. Well, I mean, I guess you can say he's hedged. You can definitely say that but you can also say it's challenging and problematic. Look, there was a chance that COP was going to fall apart completely and you were just going to have fragmented bilateral deals. The Chinese, for example, get much more influence giving out money directly in return for things with countries than being a part of a multilateral group. Having said that, US and China recently have come together on climate in advance, specifically of COP28, and there is more movement on methane emissions from the two largest emitters in the world. There's more movement on carbon capture and storage than we've seen before. Look, I'm glad the meetings happened. It is happening. It's going to be more successful than it not showing up. But there are big challenges and you're going to hear those frustrations loudly from the developing world who are taking climate on the chin.
How will Taiwan's upcoming election affect US-China relationship?
It's coming up January 13th and it look like there was a deal being put together between the two opposition candidates. That deal is now falling apart, which means it is more likely that the vice president and his representative in Washington who is going to run on the ticket with him for the DPP, the Nationalist Party, the pro autonomy as the Chinese government in Beijing says the pro-independence party, is likely to win. That means more tensions over Taiwan, with China and Taiwan and with the Americans and China. So definitely next year that's going to be a more significant risk, something for us all to watch.
Will Elon Musk provide Starlink to Gaza?
Sure he will, as long as the Israeli government says it's okay. The interesting point here is that do you want decisions over where technology is and is not provided that will change the security balance on the ground between countries decided by one man. That is what happened with Russia and Ukraine, largely to Ukraine's favor, though not consistently and not always. That is what's happening in Israel and Gaza to Israel's favor. And that is what would happen between mainland China and Taiwan in mainland China’s favor, because that's where Elon has all of his economic bets, not in favor of Taiwan. And by the way, if you're the US government or a NATO member or Japan, what that means is that you really need to be developing your own technologies or having those technologies in companies that are national champions like Lockheed was in the days in the 20th century, first company ever referred to as “too big to fail” because of the dangers to American national security if something happened to it. This is a very important issue what I call a techno-polar moment and one that is becoming much more significant over time.
Why privacy is priceless
If someone were to get a few pictures off your phone without your permission, what's the big deal, right? Don't be so blasé, says human rights attorney David Haigh, who was prominently targeted with the powerful Pegasus spyware in 2021.
"If someone breaches your private life, that is a gateway to very, very serious breaches of other human rights, like your right to life and right to all sorts of other things," he said. "That's why I think a lot of governments and public sector don't take things as seriously as they should."
Right now, he says, dictators can buy your privacy, "and with it, your life."
Haigh spoke with Eurasia Group Senior Analyst Ali Wyne as part of “Caught in the Digital Crosshairs,” a panel discussion on cybersecurity produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft and the CyberPeace Institute.
Watch the full Global Stage conversation: The devastating impact of cyberattacks and how to protect against them
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Hacked by Pegasus spyware: The human rights lawyer trying to free a princess
In April 2021, David Haigh, a human rights lawyer who'd been fighting to free Dubai’s detained Princess Latifa, received a shocking notification from investigators at The Guardian and Amnesty International: his phone was likely infected with Pegasus spyware. Forensic analysis confirmed that Haigh was the first confirmed British citizen to be hacked by Pegasus, a military-grade spyware created by Israel’s NSO Group that’s licensed to governments all over the world and used for covert surveillance.
Haigh was targeted by a foreign government, likely the ruler of Dubai, but his story isn’t unusual: Over 80% of all internet users are infected with some form of spyware, according to the US National Cyber Security Alliance. GZERO spoke with Haigh, as well as cybersecurity expert Kimberly Ortiz from Microsoft for the first episode of “Caught in the Digital Crosshairs: The Human Impact of Cyberattacks,” a new video series on cybersecurity produced by GZERO in partnership with with Microsoft and the CyberPeace Institute.. Ortiz volunteers for the Insitute and its CyberPeace Builders Program, an organization that provides free cybersecurity assistance, threat detection, and analysis to NGOs and other critical sectors while advocating for safety and security in cyberspace.
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- Fooled by cyber criminals: The humanitarian CEO scammed by hackers - GZERO Media ›
- Attacked by ransomware: The hospital network brought to a standstill by cybercriminals - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: How cyber diplomacy is protecting the world from online threats - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Foreign Influence, Cyberspace, and Geopolitics - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Cyber mercenaries and the global surveillance-for-hire market - GZERO Media ›
- The devastating impact of cyberattacks and how to protect against them - GZERO Media ›
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