Is the Paris Accord Unfair to America?
By Peter Singer
Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton
University, notes:
“But the world is
divided into sovereign states, not individuals, and there is no way to assess
each individual’s greenhouse-gas emissions. So we need to move to allocations
for each country. To do this consistently with “equal shares,” we need to
multiply the per capita share by the country’s population to reach its
emissions quota.
By this standard,
was the Paris accord unfair to the US? Hardly. The US currently has less than
5% of the world’s population, but emits nearly 15% of the world’s greenhouse
gases. If fairness means that everyone’s slice of pie should be the same size,
it is the US that is being unfair, by grabbing a slice that is three times
bigger than it should have.
India, by contrast,
has 17% of the world’s population and emits less than 6% of its greenhouse
gases, so it would be entitled to almost three times its current emissions.
Many other developing countries use an even smaller fraction of their per
capita share of the atmosphere.”