Climate Inequality around the world
It’s not just in the United States where climate inequality is an issue. When you look at the world and compare individual nations’ carbon footprint and climate change related damage, the effects aren’t usually doled out equally.
By taking a worldview, it’s evident that richer nations emit more and feel fewer effects, while poorer countries emit less but face far worse effects. It’s the same theme of the rich having the wealth to mitigate the effects of climate change. Within individual countries, environmental racism is still a thing where citizens of the same country feel different levels of effects. However, this time let’s look at how holistically climate change hasn’t impacted the biggest emitters in the same way.
Some of the biggest emitters in the world are nations like the United States, China, Russia, India, and Japan. All industrialized or industrializing nations, which as we know now is a key process that increases a nation’s carbon emissions. The justification for emitting so much carbon is usually economic growth so that each nation’s citizens can grow wealthier and achieve a higher standard of living.
Currently, the richest 10% are responsible for at least 25-43% of global carbon emissions, while the poorest 10% only accounts for about 3-5%. For example, the average American emits about 15 tons of carbon each year. Whereas in Bangladesh it’s less than one.
A quarter of Bangladesh is currently underwater. Torrential rains have flooded the nation and now millions have lost everything. Climate change has caused intense weather events to flood Bangladesh over the past few years, and coupled with rising sea levels, entire communities are being washed away.
Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston back in 2017. Many lives were lost and people lost everything there too. No one deserves to lose their livelihood to climate change regardless of how much carbon their nation emits. However, the key difference is many Americans have a better chance of returning to their normal lives. The American Red Cross raised over half a billion dollars for Harvey and NFL Star JJ Watt raised over 40 million dollars for his own Harvey relief fund.
In Bangladesh, that may not be the case. For a poor country, that kind of money won’t be raised domestically. It’s not just a major city that’s been flooded there. A quarter of the entire landmass is underwater, which is around 35,000 square kilometers. For reference, that’s a bigger area than Massachusetts.
Another great example is the Marshall Islands. Located in the central Pacific, the islands were a major American nuclear bomb test site. Now, with rising sea levels, the islands could disappear. The islands have a population of about 60,000 who could soon become climate refugees because their homes and communities will be engulfed by the seas.
The world is used to refugees arriving from war-torn nations, but soon the new normal could be climate refugees. It’s a result of major climate inequality in the world. These climate refugees simply won’t have a home through no fault of their own. They simply didn’t emit the amount of carbon that caused oceans to swallow their islands.
Climate change is a problem that affects all human beings. But some nations have the financial capabilities to hold off the worst effects, while others simply do not. This November, the United States will officially pull out of the Paris Climate Accords, a world agreement that would help nations like Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands.
Moving forward there needs to be a shift in how climate change policy is drafted. It can’t be every nation for itself. There has to be accountability, especially for the highest emitters. The doom and gloom predictions for what will happen in the United States are said to come true in the next decades, but for the poorer nations, the worst effects are already here. When the world finally does come together, inequality must be addressed along with climate change.
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