My Take | Developed nations should pay for climate sins

There is, of course, no justice in this world, and that’s especially true of climate justice. Countries that have industrialised early are those most responsible. Now, the world is on fire. But the price will be paid most heavily by low-income and underdeveloped countries.

An intriguing study, recently published by researchers at the Ivy League Dartmouth College, offers a model of how climate responsibility may be assigned. The research, published in the journal Climatic Change, is based on the idea that climate liability claims between individual countries can be scientifically established.

This means assessing the economic impact that countries have caused to other countries through their contributions to global warming. There are direct correlations between the cumulative emission of heat-trapping gases per nation to the losses and gains in gross domestic product (GDP) in 143 countries for which data are available.

Quite simply, greenhouse gases emitted in one country cause warming in another, and that warming can depress economic growth.

The five worst emitters of greenhouse gases caused US$6 trillion in global economic losses through warming from 1990 to 2014. Unsurprisingly, the United States and China lead the world, with each responsible for global income losses of about US$1.8 trillion during that period; or US$3.74 trillion in total income losses to the world economy, which is nearly a third of all the damage done to the global GDP.

They may be the worst, but they are not alone. The Dartmouth study calculates each country’s responsibility and their share of economic losses during that quarter of a century period and breaks it down in percentages.