4/13/15, "China to surpass U.S. as top cause of modern global warming," Reuters. Alister Doyle, Oslo
"China is poised to overtake the United
States as the main cause of man-made global warming since 1990, the
benchmark year for U.N.-led action, in a historic shift that may raise
pressure on Beijing to act.
China's cumulative greenhouse gas
emissions since 1990, when governments were becoming aware of climate
change, will outstrip those of the United States in 2015 or 2016,
according to separate estimates by experts in Norway and the United
States.
The shift, reflecting China's stellar economic growth,
raises questions about historical blame for rising temperatures and more
floods, desertification, heatwaves and sea level rise.
Almost 200 nations will meet in Paris in December to work out a global deal to fight climate actions beyond 2020.
"A
few years ago China's per capita emissions were low, its historical
responsibility was low. That's changing fast," said Glen Peters of the
Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo
(CICERO), ..
Using slightly different data, the U.S.-based World
Resources Institute think-tank estimated that China's cumulative carbon
dioxide emissions will total 151 billion tonnes for 1990-2016,
overtaking the U.S. total of 147 billion next year.
The rise of
cumulative emissions "obviously does open China up to claims of
responsibility from other developing countries," said Daniel Farber, a
professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley.
In a
U.N. principle laid down in 1992, rich nations are meant to lead in
cutting greenhouse gas emissions because their wealth is based on
burning coal, oil and natural gas since the Industrial Revolution began
in the 18th century.
Emerging nations, meanwhile, can burn more
fossil fuels to catch up and end poverty. But the rapid economic rise of
China, India, Brazil and many other emerging nations is straining the
traditional divide between rich and poor.
Shared Blame
"All countries now have responsibility. It's not just a
story about China -- it's a story about the whole world," said Ottmar
Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and
co-chair of a U.N. climate report last year.
India
will overtake Russia's cumulative emissions since 1990 in the 2020s to
rank fourth behind China, the United States and the European Union,
according to the CICERO calculations.
China
surpassed the United States as the top annual emitter of carbon dioxide
in around 2006 and now emits more each year than the United States and
the European Union combined. Per capita emissions by its 1.3 billion
people are around EU levels.
Beijing says the best
yardstick for historical responsibility is per capita emissions since
the 18th century, by which measure its emissions are less than a tenth
those of the United States.
But stretching liability so far back is complicated.
Should heat-trapping methane gas emitted by rice paddies
in Asia in the 19th century, now omitted, count alongside industrial
carbon emissions by Europe? Should Britain be responsible for India's
emissions before independence in 1947?
Lawyers say
it is difficult to blame people living today for emissions by ancestors
who had no inkling that greenhouse gases might damage the climate.
"I feel very uneasy about going back more than a
generation in terms of historic responsibility," said Farber, arguing
that Berlin could hardly be blamed if someone died by setting off a
rusting German World War One landmine in France.
All governments are now working out plans for a climate summit in Paris
in December that will set targets for 2025 or 2030. Beijing set a goal
last year of peaking its rising emissions around 2030, perhaps before.
"China is acting. It has acknowledged its position as a
key polluter," said Saleemel Huq, of the International Institute for
Environment and Development in London.
.
And historical responsibility is at the heart of talks on solving the problem.
The U.N. panel of climate scientists estimated last year
that humankind had emitted 1.9 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide since
the late 19th century and can only emit a trillion more before rising
temperatures breach a U.N. ceiling of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)
above pre-industrial times.
Any fair formula for
sharing out that trillion tonnes, or roughly 30 years of emissions at
current rates, inevitably has to consider what each country has done in
the past, said Myles Allen, a scientist at Oxford University.
"Until people start thinking about blame and responsibility they are not taking the problem seriously," he said."
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