The United States has inflicted more than $ 1.9 billion in damage to other countries by the effects of its greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new analysis that has provided the first measure of nations’ responsibility for feed the climate crisis.
The huge volume of global warming gases pumped by the US, the largest emitter in history, has caused so much damage to other countries, especially poor ones, through heat waves, poor crops and other consequences that the US is responsible for. the $ 1.91 trillion global revenue loss. since 1990, the study found.
This places the United States ahead of China, currently the world’s largest emitter, Russia, India, and Brazil as the next major contributors to global economic damage due to its emissions. Taken together, these five main culprits have caused a total of $ 6 trillion in losses worldwide, or about 11% of annual global GDP, since 1990, fueling climate breakdown.
“It’s a huge figure,” said Chris Callahan, a Dartmouth College researcher and lead author of the study, of Global Economic Loss. “It’s no wonder the United States and China are at the top of this list, but the numbers are really very clear. For the first time, we can show that a country’s emissions can be attributed to specific damage.” .
Dartmouth researchers combined a number of different models, showing factors such as emissions, local weather conditions and economic changes, to determine the precise impact of an individual country’s contribution to the climate crisis. They looked for these links for a period from 1990 to 2014, with research published in the journal Climatic Change.
What they found was a perniciously unequal picture: nations rich in northern latitudes, such as those in North America and Europe, have done more to fuel climate change, but have not yet been severely harmed economically. Countries like Canada and Russia have even benefited from longer farming seasons and reduced cold deaths as winters have warmed.
Bar chart of countries that have contributed the most economic losses to the rest of the world by emissions
By contrast, the poorest countries, such as those in the tropics or the low islands of the Pacific, are the ones that have done the least to harm other nations, and yet they are suffering the brunt of the economic damage of climate change. The research did not take into account things not included in GDP, such as biodiversity loss, cultural damage, and disaster deaths, which means the damage is actually much greater.
“In places that are already hot, you see it’s getting harder and harder to work outside, heat mortality is rising, it’s getting harder to grow,” said Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth geographer and co-author of the paper. “If you put this on which countries have issued the most, you get an almost perfect storm.
“There is this great inequality. Countries like the United States have disproportionately harmed the low-income countries of the global south and have disproportionately benefited the colder, higher-income countries of the global north.”
Developing countries and climate activists have lobbied for “loss and damage” payments to be made to those most affected by global warming from heat waves, floods and droughts. But the U.S., which is responsible for about a quarter of all emissions so far, has resisted the creation of such a fund, citing fears that it will be legally liable for damages caused by its voracious appetite for fossil fuels such as oil, coal. and gas.
Pressure to alter this position is mounting again ahead of the UN climate talks to be held in Egypt later this year, with an alliance of young activists from more than 40 countries recently writing to the president of the talks to urge action on loss and damage. subject.
The climate crisis “has increased the humanitarian crises that disproportionately affect the poor countries of the global south,” the letter states, noting that the UN estimates that up to 3.6 billion people worldwide now live in highly vulnerable areas. to climate disasters.
“For too long, efforts to reduce emissions and increase adaptation have been completely inadequate, exceeding people’s ability to adapt. Therefore, losses and damage are now part of the reality of climate change and s ‘they have to address it.’
Progress, however, has been heavy. Rich countries have run out of pledges to provide $ 100 billion in climate aid to vulnerable countries, and any legal avenues for extracting damage from the United States or China are complicated by the fact that neither country recognizes the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal. of The Hague Justice.
“The main impediment to one country’s claims against another for climate damage is not its scientific basis, it’s its legal basis,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Columbia School of Law. “Countries enjoy sovereign immunity against most types of claims unless they have waived them.”
This impasse means that some kind of negotiated agreement remains the most likely way to improve inequality from climate impacts. “It is a positive step for this study to start quantifying the harms of these national actors, we can see that the scale of the damage is huge,” said Carroll Muffett, executive director of the Center for International Environmental Law.
“We’re slowly moving toward some kind of responsibility for that. As the evidence increases and the U.S. record of obstructionism is established in the climate context, I don’t think this and other countries can escape the his responsibility in perpetuity, “Muffett added.
“The costs of climate damage are rising and eventually someone will have to pay that cost. The question is who it will be and how it will be done.”