Entangled Alliances

Some countries are more responsible for global warming than others. This is a very obvious but very important statement, because it transforms the issue of tackling global warming from one of self-preservation to one of ethics.

photo credit: db™

Imagine for a moment if every country in the world was more or less equally to blame for the heating of our planet- if every nation released similar amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  In this scenario, countries might choose to more or less ignore global warming, preferring, for whatever reason (e.g. upfront cost) not to make the effort to combat it and choosing instead to risk the consequences of inaction. It would be a pretty stupid decision, but it wouldn’t be an unethical one. Given that every nation was equally to blame, there would be no innocent populations that would suffer as a result. It would just be a case of reaping what you sow, not a question of morality.

In reality, of course, some countries shoulder a fair bit more of the blame for global warming than others. And, as the maps below show, that sentence could well be the biggest understatement of the year.

These maps are from a fascinating(ly scary) report by British medical journal The Lancet & University College London that assesses the future impact of global warming on the world’s health. They are density cartograms – a type of map in which a country’s size is shown in proportion to a given piece of data. As you can see, it’s an effective way of getting a point across.

Map A shows each country’s cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide between they years 1950-2000 . You’ll notice the massive bulge of mega-polluter America and how Western Europe has exploded while Africa has all but vanished.

Map B shows the regional distribution of four climate-sensitive health consequences -  malaria, malnutrition, diarrhoea and flood-related fatalities. These harbingers of death are set to increase to devastating levels as the effects of global warming set in.  You”ll notice that Africa and Southeast Asia have, essentially, become the world , while Europe, North America, Russia etc have been reduced to insignificant straits.

So the West will get away comparatively scott free from the thoroughly nasty health consequences of global warming, while the regions of the world that haven’t been busy choking the planet will suffer the worst.  And if those maps aren’t enough for you, then I give you this stark warning from the report:

Loss of healthy life years as a result of global environmental change (including climate change) is predicted to be 500 times greater in poor African populations than in European populations

Decisively tackling global warming, then, is as close as you can come to a moral imperative as far as the West is concerned.  But this hasn’t yet sunk in when it comes to the terms of domestic debate. Take, for example, the climate change bill currently working its way through the United States legislature. The Waxman-Markey bill is the America’s first real rifle-shot in the war against global warming; at its heart is a cap and trade program that promises to be extremely effective in reducing America’s carbon emissions (more of which tomorrow). But it’s currently at risk of being seriously watered down by moderate Democrats in the House and the Senate, who are concerned about the financial impact the bill will have on domestic energy companies and the energy bills of American households.

But unlike, say, the other big reforms heading America’s way in things like healthcare and labour law, the consequences of not passing an effective climate change bill go beyond the effects on American companies and American households. It’s this reality that hasn’t yet intruded into the political debate. If this changes, then maybe US lawmakers would realise that the usual, understandably selfish “country-first” attitude that  pervades most debates about domestic reform simply isn’t applicable when it comes to global warming. Breaking this nationalistic way of approaching legislation is difficult, but it needs to be done if we want radical rather than incremental solutions to global warming.

Someone needs to remind the politicians of the West that while it might seem practical to drag their feet when it comes to radical measures that tackle global warming, it’s also deeply unethical. We forget this at the third world’s peril.