Climate Debt and Credit

[sidd]

Matthews, 2015 DOI:10.1038/NCLIMATE2774 on national carbon debts and credits

“This Letter presents a new way to quantify historical inequalities among nations using carbon and climate debts, defined as the amount by which national climate contributions have exceeded a hypothetical equal per-capita share over time.”

The largest creditors are India (-75.6,-141.5), Indonesia(-14.2,-27.6), Bangladesh(-12.8,-21.4). The largest debtors are US(100.3,202.7), Russia(27,64.7) and Japan(15.9,25.3). The numbers are in gigatonne CO2 since 1990 and 1960.

In the supplementary, they look at consumption based estimate, which helps China quite a bit. Fig S3.

I attach part of Fig2 and fig S3

sidd

[Sigmetnow]

Making the per capita debt numbers more personal:

If you live in the US or Australia, then between 1990 and 2013 you accumulated a debt of more than U$12,000. People in the UK are doing a bit better, racking up about US$4000 in debt over that time.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28135-everyone-in-the-us-and-australia-owes-12000-in-co2-emissions/