Climate Damage: Rich colonization of atmosphere cost poor nations over $1.9 trillion

By Hauwa Ali

Environmental activists, scientists and some government officials and have been clamouring that rich countries should pay the most to address climate change, and even pay compensation to poor countries because rich industrialized nations have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases.

According to the British journalist Jeremy Williams, “Climate change is racist”, because of the disproportionate harm the poor countries have had to suffer due to the inactions of the rich countries. 

A new study by two Dartmouth scientists, Published recently in the journal ‘Climatic Change’,  has calculated just how much economic impact larger emitters have caused other nations.

The data shows that the top carbon emitter, the United States, has caused more than $1.9 trillion in climate damage to other countries from 1990 to 2014, including $310 billion in damage to Brazil, $257 billion in damage to India, $124 billion to Indonesia, $104 billion to Venezuela and $74 billion to Nigeria. But at the same time, the United States’ own carbon pollution has benefited the U.S. by more than $183 billion.

In carrying out the study, the researchers looked at how much carbon each nation emitted and what it means for global temperatures, using large climate models and simulating a world with that country’s carbon emissions, a version of the scientifically accepted attribution technique used for extreme weather events. He then connected that to economic studies that looked at the relationship between temperature rise and damage in each country.

“We can actually fingerprint U.S. culpability.” said study co-author Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth College climate scientist.

“Do all countries look to the United States for restitution? Maybe. The U.S. has caused a huge amount of economic harm by its emissions, and that’s something that we have the data to show.” Mankin said.

However in global climate talks, the United States have denied that their actions caused specific damages, and according to the study lead author Christopher Callahan, this research study lifts that veil of deniability.

Just recently, the continued failure on the part of rich white countries to take responsibility for this injustice was on full display at the United Nations climate meetings in Bonn, Germany.

“Scientific studies such as this groundbreaking piece show that high emitters no longer have a leg to stand on in avoiding their obligations to address loss and damage,” said Bahamian climate scientist Adelle Thomas of Climate Analytics, who wasn’t part of the study. She said recent studies “increasingly and overwhelmingly show that loss and damage is already crippling developing countries.

While carbon emissions have been tracked for decades on the national levels and damages have been calculated, Callahan and Mankin said this is the first study to connect all the dots from the countries producing the emissions to countries affected by it.

“It’s the countries that have emitted the least that are also the ones that tend to be harmed by increases in global warming. So that double inequity to me is kind of a central finding that I want to emphasize,” Callahan said.

According to the study, after the U.S., the countries that caused most damage since 1990 are China ($1.8 trillion), Russia ($986 billion), India ($809 billion) and Brazil ($528 billion). Just the United States and China together caused about one-third of the world’s climate damage.

However, most of these rich countries, are doing little to properly address this inequity and they refuse to accept the climate debt they owe to poorer countries and communities.

In so doing, they sentence millions of people that  have already been negatively affected by this system of oppression, colonialism and slavery to premature death, disability or unnecessary hardship. 

Poor developing nations have only been able to convinced rich nations to promise to financially help them reduce carbon emissions for the future, but haven’t been able to get restitution for damage already caused, a term called “loss and damage.”

If stringent steps are not taken to cut emissions effects of climate change will only worsen as poor countries often face the most dire consequences in a warming world.

For example, another research suggests global warming would leave more than half of Africa’s population at risk of undernourishment, due to reduced agricultural production. This is despite Africa having contributed relatively little to greenhouse gas emissions.

UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston recently said the world risks a new era of “climate apartheid.”