by Catherine Brahic @ New Scientist,18:22 17 March 2009
The phrase “it’s not fair” is not just the preserve of petty childhood tantrums – you hear it a lot in climate negotiations between global leaders too. Now, a proposal to force rich people everywhere to stick to personal emissions targets offers hope for a fairer climate deal.
The plan was put forward by Heleen de Coninck of the Princeton Environmental Institute at the Copenhagen climate congress last week.
The Kyoto protocol, which will expire in 2012, divvies up emissions rights roughly according to how much nations emitted during the 20th century.
While industrialised countries were given different targets according to what they could reasonably achieve, developing nations are not required to limit their emissions at all on the grounds that their 20th century emissions were negligible compared to those of rich nations. Link to article
