Global Warming and Population

Blaming China and India for climate change

US President George Bush has often indicated his reluctance to be bound to global targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if developing countries such as China and India are not subject to them as well.

Recently, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been airing similar sentiments.

Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to ratify the Kyoto Agreement because of similar concerns as stated by George Bush.

From their viewpoint, it would seem that China and India are responsible for runaway climate change and the rich countries cannot do anything without these two giants being involved. It is feared that given the large populations of India and China and combined with their strong economic growth, their thirst for energy and materials may result in outstripping of resources.

However, many years ago, the world agreed that due to the way greenhouses gases accumulate in the atmosphere over decades, it was today’s rich countries that were responsible for climate change. As a result, developing countries such as China and India were not subject to the targets that the rich countries were. Developing countries were strongly urged to follow a different path to development, though; one that would use cleaner and sustainable technologies. This was known as the Common but differentiated responsibilities principle.

This point is almost never discussed—certainly any mainstream reporter talking to Bush, Blair (or other prominent world figures who insist China and India be subject to various targets), have rarely challenged them with this particular point (at least from what I have been able to research and observe).

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Common but differentiated responsibilities, or “Climate Justice”

Summarizing from this site’s article that looks at this issue of “climate justice and equity” in more depth:

• The world—including the industrialized countries—accepted that the industrialized countries have more obligations to reduce their harmful greenhouse gas emissions
• Greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere for decades and centuries, so the industrialized countries’ enormous quantity of emissions are still present in the earth’s atmosphere
• While developing countries are growing and therefore increasing their emissions, their road to development has been comparatively recent, and it would therefore be unfair to penalize them to the same extent as industrialized nations
• Around the time of the Kyoto protocol, for example, the emission of 1 US citizen equaled that of 19 Indians.

In other words, today’s rich nations are the ones responsible for global warming and developing countries therefore feel it is unfair to be subjected to targets for something that was not their fault (and their emissions are for basic needs and development; for the rich it has moved to luxury consumption and lifestyles).

This difference was recognized as a principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. When the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was formulated and then signed and ratified in 1992 by most of the world's countries (including the United States and other nations who would later back out of the subsequent Kyoto protocol), this principle was acknowledged. The principle recognized that

Furthermore, the need for developing countries to reduce emissions ultimately was also recognized, but via a different way: The rich countries were to help provide means for the developing world to transition to cleaner technologies while developing:

As the World Resources Institute (WRI) highlighted (2003), there is a huge contrast between developed/industrialized nations and poorer developing countries in greenhouse emissions. For example:

• In terms of historical emissions, industrialized countries account for roughly 80% of the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere to date.
• Annually, more than 60 percent of global industrial carbon dioxide emissions originate in industrialized countries, where only about 20 percent of the world’s population resides.

The WRI also notes the differences in energy use, which the cartoon below also captures:

(See this site’s climate justice and equity section for further details.)

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Population and Climate Change

A “Malthusian” theory about the relationship between population growth and the environment suggests that as populations grow, they will strip their resources leading to famine, hunger and environmental degradation.

As detailed further in this site’s section on population, that is an oversimplification and has largely shown not to be true. Instead, it has been factors such as politics and economics (i.e. how we use our resources and for what purpose) that has determined environmental degradation or sustainability.

For example, the world’s wealthiest 20% (i.e. the rich countries) consume approximately 80% of the world’s resources, while the rest of humanity shares the other 20% of resource consumed, as noted in the consumption section of this web site.

In regards to climate change, countries with large populations such as China and India have not been the countries contributing greenhouse gases for the decades that has been required to trigger climate change, as noted further above.

While in total amounts their emissions might be high (China is second largest emitter after the United States, for example), per person, their emissions are significantly smaller as noted earlier.

The atmosphere of course doesn’t “care” so to speak, but from the perspective of international relations, this is important: As stated above, penalizing developing countries for the problem mostly caused by the rich countries is not seen as fair by the developing world and so they will understandably resist demands by Bush, Blair and others to meet the same types of targets as industrialized nations.

An additional concern however, is that as countries such as China, India and Brazil grow in prosperity, there will be large populations with purchasing power, consuming more goods and services, thus making more demands on the planet.

Indeed, many environmentalists have constantly noted that if such countries were to follow the style of development that the rich countries used and emulate them, then our planet may not be able to cope much longer.

Yet, as also noted in this site’s population section, researchers have found that depending on what variables you factor in, the planet can support an extremely large population, or an extremely small one. These ranges are ridiculously wide: from 2 billion to 147 billion people! Why such variance? It depends on how efficiently resources are used and for what purpose (i.e. economics).

There are concerns, however, that many developing countries are pursuing the same path to development that the current industrialized countries have, which involved many environmentally damaging practices. Ironically much of the advise and encouragement to follow this path comes from the western economic schools of thought. There is therefore an urgent need to focus on cleaner technologies and an alternative path to a more sustainable form of development.

Journalist Diplip Hiro captures this quite well, when interviewed by Amy Goodman for the radio/TV broadcast of the Democracy Now! show:

So, as Dilip Hiro has noted, the high populations of China and India may present a problem, but it is through the conscious decision on how to use resources that will be important to address these problems.

Researchers and commentators will often comment that if we follow the present course then there will be disaster ahead. To some extent there are already problems through global warming due to the slow response. Yet, rarely throughout history has the use of a resource remained constant. Many economists remind us that over time, more efficient and innovative ways emerge, so in there lies the hope that the present course will not be maintained. While some are overly optimistic that all the world’s problems will be solved because humanity always figures out an answer, many are usually wise to be cautious, given our violent histories.

Technology investment into alternatives is therefore also important. President Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2007 called for cleaner (or at least more efficient) fuel use, implying that technology and consumption patterns have a bearing on environmental issues.

The private sector as well as public has slowly been pouring more money into this, though many argue that far more could still be done, and that these alternative energy industries have not been given the kind of boost and support that the fossil fuel industry had. Hardly a month goes by without some news item of technology companies researching more efficient and innovative energy sources, or of large companies and local governments attempting some sort of initiative to cut down on wasteful energy consumption.

Interestingly, many developing countries, including China and Brazil in particular, have been making progress towards cleaner and more efficient technologies, resulting in many countries being able to reduce their emissions to some extent, as also detailed further in this site’s climate justice and equity section. As the common but differentiated responsibilities principles recognize, it will clearly be in the interests of developing countries to continue do these things (and more) as they face enormous consequences from climate change if they do not.

The economic, political and technology choices thus have a more important bearing on climate change than “over population.”

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Slow progress by rich countries leads to blaming poorer countries

What has also concerned some people is that industrialized countries have had over two decades to try and address climate change issues but their lack of progress, their faltering and even resistance to change will have the effect of putting more burden on developing countries. In effect, this could allow the rich countries to minimize the changes they may have to make to their lifestyles.

Bush’s recent call for more efficient technology use and investment, while welcome, has been criticized by many environmental groups as being slow in happening and modest. These, and other calls should have been made a long time ago.

The British newspaper, the Independent, summarized an International Energy Agency (IEA) report noting that while emissions from poorer countries will grow, per person, they will still be a lot less than richer countries for a long time:

(The World Energy Outlook web site has more details on this and other predictions of energy demands and use up to 2030.)

The rich countries have much to do already. The more they drag their heels on this issue while developing countries develop, the more blame and attention will be placed on countries such as China and India and “over” population will be seen as a major contributor to climate change, while other underlying issues and causes will go relatively unexplained.

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