In calculations designed to help nations hurt by climate change get compensation for decades of carbon pollution from rich, high-emitting nations, researchers have calculated just how much losses and benefits each country has caused to others.
The new figures quantify what scientists, officials and activists have long called the inequity in national climate histories with the rich nations benefiting and the poor ones hurting from the production of greenhouse gas emissions. The two Dartmouth scientists behind the study published in Tuesday’s journal Climatic Change say it can be used in courtrooms and in long-contentious and unresolved international climate negotiations about payments from rich nations, that caused the problem with burning of coal, oil and gas, to poor ones, where the biggest damages are.
