Who is responsible for global warming?

Who is responsible for global warming? That is a question that
has dominated recent climate negotiations, most notably the
failed 2009 climate convention in Copenhagen. Developing
countries were putting the responsibility for historic carbon
emissions and thus global warming on the developed nations.
Developed nations on the other hand demanded that developing
countries reduced their carbon emissions. The developing
countries refused this because they felt that the rich nations
had to reduce their carbon emissions and allow developing nations
to continue to emit carbon in the quest for economic development.
The rich nations in turn argued that we are all in it together
and that from now on developing nations will be the greatest
carbon emitters. The deadlock over historic carbon emissions
remains to this day. A recently published article entitled
Counting carbon: historic emissions from fossil fuels, long-run
measures of sustainable development and carbon debt attempts to
uncover whether the developing countries have a point about the
historic responsibility for carbon emissions by the developed
nations or whether this question is more complex altogether. The
lead author of the Counting Carbon paper, Jan Kunnas, an
independent researcher from Finland who was until recently
affiliated to the University of Stirling in Scotland, discusses
the question of historic responsibility of carbon emissions on
this episode of the podcast.


Music credits: Where You Are Now by Zapac, available from
ccMixter