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Developing countries emit 2/3 of the world's carbon: they can't afford the lending terms of renewable projects
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- Title
- The Financial Paradox Blocking Efforts to Fight Climate Change
- Published
- Dec 2 2023
- Word count
- 1618 words
According to word data.info (not sure how reliable this is, it's the top link on Google),
That means that the 14.46% of the word population in developed areas is responsible for 37% of carbon emissions. Developed countries are responsible for over twice their proportional allowance, still, even after years of discussion about how to bring it down.
How can we possibly expect developing countries to lower their carbon emissions, when developed countries are producing over double the amount per capita. Of course I'm not saying nothing should be done and no support needs to be given to developing countries to help them lower their emissions, but it strikes me as massively hypocritical to point at ~85% of the population and blame them for creating ~63% percent of carbon emissions. We need to remove the plank from our own eyes.
I have for a few years come to the simple conclusion that the real solution to climate change, when it comes to “developed nations” (I hate that utterly judgmental term) is the one thing we desperately do not want to do: reduce consumption and waste
Have you ever thought about how much trash is in your local grocery store? Except for produce and bulk goods, everything comes in containers that are meant to be thrown away. You could be charitable and say that they are meant to be recycled, but let’s face it; recycling is just an excuse for companies to get away with all the trash and advertising that is their packaging. Most food packaging is some sort of plastic which has limited recyclability to begin with, and it’s actually fairly uncommon for any given item to be actually recycled, refund programs be damned.
Even if you do avoid packaged goods at the store, the food on the shelves are almost certainly are or are made from plants from giant farms where they are using artificial fertilizers, which have their own environmental impact.
To make things worse, a lot of products sold have water unnecessarily added to them, which increases their weight and volume, causing more greenhouse emissions by transportation. Bottled water is the biggest middle finger to the environment, but pretty much every soap and detergent is watered down and could be sold as a solid or liquid concentrate. Next time you pick up a big bottle of laundry detergent keep in mind that there is literally no reason for it to be that big. Even meat has brine added to bulk it out sometimes. Zero-waste or bulk bin stores seem to be taking off in Canada but in my corner of LA the only thing close are candy stores.
And that is just one aspect of unnecessary consumption! I could talk about transportation but that is something that has been talked about relentlessly here already; it would be preaching to the choir.
Granted, I am sure that a lot of this consumption is caused by people who do not have time to prepare things for themselves, so I’m really not trying to put blame on anyone. It’s also fairly clear that part of the problem is the economic systems driving this kind of consumption, but politicians have all the incentive in the world to continue with the policies that create these problems as it’s part of the quest for infinite growth. But for people who are well off, what is your excuse? Why do you need to drive your giant car and order delivery meals and do all the other things you do?
Unless “well off” is being wealthy enough to afford to hire someone to cook, the reason people making a lot of money order out is the same as for those making less: preparing food is time consuming, and most would prefer to spend that time elsewhere. There are ways to reduce time spent, but they usually involve a lot of monotony (e.g. preparing in bulk and eating the same thing most or all the week) which can also be unappealing.
One potential partial solution to this that I’ve discussed with friends in the past is some sort of system where a neighborhood all pitches in to pay community members to use a shared kitchen to prepare one meal for the neighborhood each day, but I have no idea how practical that’d be and logistics could be challenging.
I think that the thing driving this consumptive behaviour is largely economic in nature, as I mentioned. If one is well off it means they don't have to spend as much time working and at that point it becomes a personal choice to be more damaging to the environment for one's personal enjoyment. That's where I'm much less likely to have sympathy for the individual. Of course there is no hard and fast cutoff for this, and the number of "well off" people is relatively low, especially on a global scale, so their individual choices in these areas probably don't make much difference. Though that completely disregards the actual high-cost things they are likely to do, like frequent travelling - especially in charter flights and private jets.
Consumption of material goods and their packaging is tough because it's such an individual concern — unlike electricity generation, which may as well be magic to end-users, buying daily items is really tangible. People can see the plastic packaging and understand that they are directly creating demand for these products, not some mysterious corporation halfway across the country.
But as an individual looking for inexpensive goods, it's pretty difficult to completely avoid consumption. If I lived on a homestead, I would make most of what I needed myself and probably grow much of my produce. But I live in a city and for that reason I'm subject to the whims of the retailers. I made the decision recently to stop buying things online, with very few exceptions, because I don't want to contribute to the ecological waste (and road traffic emissions) stemming from deliveries. (But the proximate cause was that my packages were getting stolen... and that was more annoying than any theoretical emissions reduction.)
I already pay a little more for my electricity than most people because I have a green supply power purchase agreement, but the higher cost actually encouraged me to insulate my space better and keep the thermostat off where possible. So I've not only decarbonized my electricity generation but actually reduced how much load I'm creating for the grid altogether – because I had an incentive to reduce consumption, I found creative (well, not really) ways to do it. But that's something I could do once and forget about. I struggle to reduce my individual consumption if I have to think about it constantly.
One example is that there's a nice grocery store near me that sells milk in glass bottles which you're expected to return periodically to be refilled, instead of buying a new one and throwing out/recycling the old one. Reuse > recycle. Really cool, but as an individual, it's hard to make that decision repeatedly, every single time I buy milk. I could do it, but the store is very expensive, more than twice what I typically pay for foodstuffs, and requires a separate trip from my regular Aldi run because it's in the exact opposite direction. So I just don't do it.
I have some vague plans to reduce my consumption of plastic in favor of glass, metal, and biodegradable materials to the extent possible, but they don't really align with my plans to keep my grocery bills low. I could get most of my food from that crunchy grocery store if I wanted, but I think the cost would be 2–4x as much as a typical place. Hard to justify because I can't really reduce how much food I have to consume as a physical creature. And I can't really start a major initiative in my life without aligning all of my goals. So that one is still a work in progress.
I see your point of view. But in case it wasn't clear, I think most of the blame lies on economic pressures rather than individual choices. In a capitalist society time, labor, and money are both scarce resources, and that drives a lot of consumption.
That's a useful observation — I've talked a bit about the immorality of excessive Western energy use in the past — but I think one that is not strictly at hand here.
Indeed per-capita emissions are important, but emissions in Western countries are decreasing. Slowly, but they are. Emissions in developing countries are not decreasing—they're accelerating extremely quickly—and the high cost of capital is a big reason why.
That's not at all what this article or myself are saying—these very high emissions are directly a result of the high cost of capital in developing countries, which is directly a result of the wealthy world refusing to lend money for renewable energy projects at the same rates they do for themselves.
Whether or not it's fair that we have to talk about climate finance in developing countries, they make up 63% of the world's emissions. They just do. And developing countries will continue to make up a larger and larger portion of global emissions in the next few years. If we don't address climate finance in developing countries, they are literally never going to decarbonize.
Again, this is not a "developing countries should feel bad for polluting" thing, but rather an indictment of Western countries for allowing this problem to fester in the developing world.
I completely agree with you. My comment was really just an angry rant/parallel thought to the discussion.
My anger isn't with developing countries for using the same methods of development that western nations used to develop themselves (though this is a big problem), it is as you say, developed/western countries aren't doing enough to lower their own emissions, nevermind helping other nations.
I raised the point about per capita emissions simply because I thought the headline ran the risk of causing people to say 'oh well developing countries only make 1/3 of emissions' rather than 'developing countries are still making 1/3 of emissions?!?'.
As I said, it was more of a parallel thought than a direct response to you (or the article), so I wasn't calling either of you hypocritical, more just lamenting over the state of things.
Yeah, that's an important qualifier and a good way to frame the equity part of the discussion. Despite having the resources to decarbonize at their fingertips—the LCOL of solar is significantly lower than any fossil fuel, and wind is competitive with most, even if their capacity factors aren't as good—wealthy countries are still lagging far behind what they ought to be doing personally.
To some extent this is also a matter of technology. In one sense, wealthy countries are doing outsize work to the extent that many/most energy efficiency and manufacturing breakthroughs that enable the cost of renewable technology itself to decrease are coming from more developed countries like the US/EU; or at least places with a lot of heavy industry activity, including China.
But while laws like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US are certainly promoting more investment into green tech on domestic soil, they're protectionist and don't necessarily encourage global cooperation or technology-sharing. The technology will eventually trickle down elsewhere, but it doesn't do anything to kickstart the green economies of developing countries who really need it the most. They'll still be buying and building at a premium.
Archive link. According to the Center for Global Development and other sources, developing countries generate about 63% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As wealthy Western countries slowly decrease their emissions, much of the blame has been shifted to these lower-income nations: why can't they "pull their weight"?
If it were that easy, they would be doing it. The way our financial system is designed makes it effectively impossible to decarbonize developing economies at the rates needed to abide by emission reduction quotas defined in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Simply put:
The Biden administration in the United States apparently intends to contribute about $3 billion to developing economies to adopt low-emissions technology, but this is not anywhere near enough to prevent significant global warming. It's also worth noting that one of the only reasons many Western countries have been "decarbonizing" is that they have outsourced much of their dirty, emissions-heavy manufacturing to developing countries.
In addition to decarbonizing their own industries, Western countries must take responsibility for the high cost of capital in developing countries. They must provide direct governmental support for low-cost renewable and low-emissions technology and create systems for financial institutions to lend money for such infrastructure more effectively to developing countries.
In terms of specific financial methods, the Climate Policy Initiative states in their 2014 report "Finance Mechanisms for Lowering the Cost of Renewable Energy in Rapidly Developing Countries" that:
A 2023 paper by the CPI titled "Cost of Capital for Renewable Energy Investments in Developing Economies" proposes that wealthy countries enact a "credit guarantee facility" toward renewable and low-emissions capital lending projects in developing countries to lower the cost of capital and therefore reduce global emissions more quickly.
Apart from the capital intensive nature of moving towards renewables, there is also the movement of major polluting industries to third world countries as apart of the western world's decrease in emissions.
Because of the rising taxes/regulations on industries which are polluting, they shift towards areas where the regulations are not as high. This definitely skews the metric in favour of western countries in terms of direct emissions, but as they are still the consumers of most of these goods, the indirect emissions do remain high.
Kinda like saying EVs don't have emissions and making electricity for them in coal plants.
Indirect emissions from EVs at least have the hope of being reduced/eliminated eventually by residential/grid scale renewable projects.
I agree. That's important.
At the same time, it sort of dodges the real problem: Today every country agreed to the COP28-text. Countries have these brilliant targets for cutting emissions.
But they're just targets. If we're to reach these goals, emission cuts need to be so big, so quickly that reducing emissions down the line simply makes reaching the targets impossible.
In my opinion this isn't about perfect being the enemy of good, but of minor improvements derailing the momentum for huge, sweeping changes in behavior needed for a livable planet in the near future.
Are personal vehicles part of a sustainable future? I don't know. Certainly not today.
3 billion is laughably low considering what we're spending on... less constructive things right now. I really hope the US politicians of the next 20-30 years can get us out of endless wars and conflicts and start investing our "best economy ever" into fighting the problems that are actually going to destroy society.
We have the resources, the willpower, and the technology to make an insane dent in the decarbonization of not just our country, but the entire world. We just need to use it and get over our insane obsession with spending trillions on war and oil.
The US is an oil exporter - it makes money on oil, not spends money on oil.
Separately, on the opinion side of things, I wouldn't call support to Ukraine and Israel an "obsession with war," personally.
The world spends trillions on oil subsidies, we're giving money hand over fist to fossil fuel companies. If these benefits were given to renewables 20 years ago we'd already be well on our way to net-zero carbon emissions.
And don't act like the Ukraine and Israel conflicts aren't just the most recent in a long line of ever lasting military conflicts the US inserts itself into (whether officially or not) for political and usually natural resource reasons. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Niger, Somali, Pakistan, Yemen, and more just in the last 20 years.
I'm not. I do find "the US inserted itself into Ukraine for political reasons" to be a strange take though. It's not that it's inaccurate, it's just so hostile.
I'm just so tired of being at perpetual war and having half of our discretionary budget be spent on the military. It's like we can't even go a year without a new crisis the US is somehow obligated to solve for the rest of the world. I know that's hyperbole but when you see so much of our hard work transformed into tanks, bombs, jets, and guns to go kill someone halfway across the planet for 60 years straight it gets a little old.
Imagine how far the world would be if even a fraction of those resources were used for something constructive.