By Tom:
Our friends at Sawdays have recently started a blog called ‘What about China’. It’s worth a peek. Today’s article discusses something we mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. For fear of repeating myself – it’s time to start looking at changing things in the US (20.2 tonnes per person), with the UK closely behind (12 tonnes), before we start pointing our fingers at the Chinese.
Here are the figures:
On average each person in the world is responsible for 4.6 tonnes a year. In Britain each person is responsible for 12 tonnes. A Chinese citizen is below average at 4.2 tonnes and an Indian is well below average at only 1.4 tonnes. An American is responsible for a whopping 20.2 tonnes. It would be reasonable for China to claim that its emissions per person should be allowed to rise in order to lift it’s population out of poverty – particularly since the west has benefited historically from huge emissions over many years and is responsible for 80 per cent of the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.