CHIRONY

Reports that China single-handedly torpedoed Copenhagen have caused great distress among those who believe that the conference’s failures spell doom for our planet. Mark Lynas of the Guardian, who witnessed the train-wreck first-hand, provides this insightful and engaging account of conference events. He concludes the article with a passionate indictment of China’s role in the international community:

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China’s century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower’s freedom of action. I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away.”

I have a hard time casting China as the villain in this pathetic tragedy. In fact, it’s a good thing that China doesn’t have a decent full-time PR firm, less they would put cracks in the West’s moral haughtiness like an ice shelf in Greenland. But China doesn’t really care all that much, especially when they can control the conversation at home.

Here’s the thing: not all countries are made equal. Although China and Russia’s tiny friend Nauru are both generally classified as “countries” in the English language, we should not deduce that they have the same responsibilities and that – in a just world – they would be permitted to produce the same carbon emissions. Why? Because the entity known as “China” represents about 100,000 times more people than the entity known as “Nauru.”

To flip this on its head, we would never agree to permit Nauru the same carbon emissions as, say, the United States. That’s absurd! But, for some reason many believe that China, which represents about 1/5th of world’s population, should not be allowed to emit more carbon than the United States, which represents less than 1/20th of the world’s population. If only there was a way to figure out carbon emissions as a function of a country’s population…

Based on this data from the International Energy Agency, I present my top 20 carbon culprits (of 1990 to 2006):

China is nowhere to be found – they rank 96^th with carbon emissions of 4.6 metric tons per capita, on par with the global average. However, Russia’s friends in Nauru are really killing our environment! Though not nearly as much as the United States, the world’s wealthiest country.

The irony is that China is nearly leading the world in green investments as a percentage of GDP. In other words, they are working harder than anyone else to create the solutions to a problem that they didn’t cause – and the West is still bitching.

China wrecked the Copenhagen deal because they arn’t suckers. If I were in Wen Jiabao’s shoes – which I’m glad I’m not – I would have done the exact same thing. Actually, I would have upped the stakes with something like this:

I’ll tell you what. We promise to keep our per capita carbon emissions permanently below 75% of the United States’ per capita emissions. The ball is in your court – put up or shut up.”