If people in the industrializing countries (particularly China and India) continue to burn more coal and drive more cars, they will metaphorically cook the planet. These nations have the highest growth rates for fossil fuel emissions, and China is set to soon become the world’s foremost carbon emitter if it has not already done so. These nations are in effect saying to North America, Europe, and Japan, „Agree to reduce your emissions faster than we do, or we won’t reduce ours at all and the entire planet will burn.“
This Grand Bargain could amount to an unprecedented shift of the world’s economic center of gravity. During decades of „development“ policy and aid, the disparity between rich and poor only grew; now, however, the poor world has a weapon – even if its use implies a suicide pact.
[…] And we must remember: the global South may have a leverage point here, but the North still has the guns. In history, nations have gone to war to enforce or avoid transfers of wealth much smaller than those implied in some climate equity proposals.
Quelle: Big melt meets big empty: Rethinking the implications of climate change and peak oil
Für den angehenden Historiker ganz interessant:
The terrible implication is that a relentlessly declining fuel supply will almost certainly have devastating economic, social, and political impacts. Trade, manufacturing, and farming will be hard hit. No nation is prepared to deal with the high prices and shortages for energy that will soon begin to work their way through the entire global economic system.
Als würde sich die Weltkriege 1:1 wiederholen …
