The developed countries of the “global north” are responsible for 92% of excess global emissions, according to a 2020 study in The Lancet Planetary Health. Yet it is the rest of the world – the “global south” – that disproportionately bears the brunt of climate change. Emergency measures to reflect more of the Sun could help temporarily avoid the worst impacts, but it must serve to improve the safety of those most affected.
Somewhere between 15% and 40% of CO₂ emissions will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years. Since so much climate change is already “locked in”, any strategy to tackle it based on emissions reduction alone, regardless of how quickly we reduce them, would still result in catastrophic ice losses in the Arctic and Antarctica leading to sea level rise, loss of low-lying countries and hundreds of millions of climate refugees. It would still mean global food and water shortages, massive flooding and wild fires, and a permanent loss of ecosystems. These devastating changes will continue to disproportionately impact the global south.
