An aerial view of the Phillips 66 refinery is seen in Linden, New Jersey, US on March 8, 2022.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | beautiful pictures
The United States and China, the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, each caused more than $1.8 trillion in global economic losses between 1990 and 2014, according to a new University of Science and Technology study. Dartmouth connects emissions from individual countries to the economic damage of climate change elsewhere.
Report, published in a magazine Climate change on Tuesday, showed that some of the top emitters are responsible for causing massive economic damage to poorer nations more vulnerable to global warming.
Climate change is already causing economic damage to countries by hurting agricultural output, reducing labor productivity and limiting industrial output, researchers say.
According to the report, just five of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters caused a global economic loss of $6 trillion due to warming between 1990 and 2014. Russia, India and Brazil caused economic losses of more than 500 billion USD each in the same period.
“This study provides an answer to the question of whether there is a scientific basis for claims of climate responsibility – the answer is yes,” said Christopher Callahan, a doctoral candidate at Dartmouth and a study author, said in a statement. “We quantified individual countries’ likelihood of being responsible for historical temperature-driven income changes in every other country.”
Climate-related lawsuits have so far targeted the actions of oil and gas companies rather than the responsibility of an individual country. However, more countries over the past few years have called on richer nations to pay the price for the “loss and damage” caused by emissions caused by climate change. The United States has ruled out that high-emissions countries should compensate more vulnerable countries.
The report calculated the damage caused by one country’s emissions to the economy of each of the other 143 countries for which data is available.
Countries that suffer economically from US emissions have warmer temperatures and are poorer than the global average, according to the study. They are usually located in the Global South or the tropics.
Between 1990 and 2014, for example, the United States caused Mexico a total of $79.5 billion in economic losses related to emissions from the U.S. territory, according to the study. The US also cost the Philippines $34 billion in economic losses.
Meanwhile, US-produced emissions have a positive impact on countries like Canada and Russia, contributing to profits of $247 billion and $341 billion, respectively, according to the analysis.
The countries that benefit from US emissions have cooler temperatures and are wealthier than the global average, the study said. These countries are usually located at North or mid latitudes. Warmer temperatures can, in some cases, help increase yields by boosting crop yields.
The distribution of climate impacts is also uneven, as the top ten emitters have caused more than two-thirds of the global damage.
“This study provides legally valid estimates of the financial losses that countries suffer from the climate change activities of other countries,” said Justin Mankin, assistant professor of geography. The study’s senior author and researcher, said in a statement.
“The responsibility for warming lies largely with a handful of major emitters, and this warming has resulted in the enrichment of a few rich countries at the expense of the poorest,” says Mankin. In the world.
