Rich countries are investing vast sums in fossil fuel booms abroad whilst seeking climate brownie points with their home audiences, finds a brand-new report. A focus on ‘territorial’ emissions makes little sense in a globalised economy.
Picture the following: a UK investor buys a coal mine in Africa. The coal is shipped to China where it powers factories that produce goods which are shipped to the UK for consumption. Citizens in the UK benefit financially from the coal extraction, and materially from the goods produced.
So who’s responsible for tackling the huge amounts of carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere along that supply chain? According to UN rules, it’s not the UK.
Under the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol before it, countries are only responsible for the greenhouse gases physically emitted within their borders. Unfortunately, this exclusive focus on ‘territorial’ emissions makes little sense in a globalised economy in which capital and goods flow across borders, and results in a completely misleading picture of where responsibility actually lies.
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