As Key (1949) has demonstrated, a disorganised politics favours the “haves” over the “have-nots”. During the the Kyōtō Protocol, disorganisation of international alliances permitted the fossil fuel “haves” – Australia and the Gulf States with already the world’s highest per capita emissions – carte blanche to increase their emissions. A properly organised system of alliances would have seen these wealthy resource-exporting nations outnumbered and under fierce pressure from LDCs, SISs, high mountain states and the high-technology industrial nations for deep and rapid emissions reductions.
Per capita greenhouse gas emissions including land use change in 2000, around the time of the actual Kyōtō Protocol |
In contrast the LDCs, SISs and the EU – the resource-poor pro-reduction countries – placed themselves in disparate blocs and failed to develop a plan to counter the OPEC nations, nor the analogous Australian greenhouse sceptic organisations who dictated policy there. Luomi (2011) has demonstrated how the LDCs – at least Muslim LDCs – were led and had their interests represented by oil states with opposing interests rather than the by EU with aligned interests. In fact, the effort to exclude “developing” nations was not done by the poor LDCs, but by wealthy oil exporters to prevent them having to make deep cuts that would necessarily extirpate the wealth of the oil sheikhs like the Al Sacud, Al Sabah, Al Thani, Al Nahyan and Al Maktoum families.
The most basic target at the world’s first climate change protocol (Koch, 2003, p. 147; Najam et. al, 2003) was to set an ecologically-based allowance of emissions per capita. The most logical basis for ecologically-based emissions allowance is energy consumption of native fauna measured by basal metabolism (Flannery 1994, Lovegrove 2000, Orians and Milewski 2007) as this should reflect each ecoregion’s naturally sustainable pattern of energy use. Knowledge of geographical patterns of human metabolism is very scanty; however what evidence does exist (Tranah et. al, 2011; Roberts, 1978, pp. 44, 94; Leonard et. al., 2002; Coon, 1965, pp. 16-17, 244-245) suggests similar patterns of metabolic rates.
Nation or group of nations (average value) |
Approximate relative homiotherm BMR (Australia = 1; Lovegrove, 2000) |
Allowable per capita emissions (Australia = 1) |
Actual per capita emissions (Australia = 1) |
Required reduction to meet parity (assuming no nation increases emissions) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Australia
|
1
|
1
|
93%
|
|
Arid subtropical Asia and North Africa
|
1.25
|
0.75
|
88%
|
|
Southern Africa
|
1.25 to 2
(depending on taxon; higher for larger species)
|
1.4
|
0.30
|
33%
|
Tropical Americas
|
2
|
0.20
|
33%
|
|
Tropical Africa and Asia
|
1.5
|
0.10
(possible cap) |
0%
|
|
Enriched World (northern)
|
3
|
0.30
|
0%
|
|
Enriched World (Southern Cone)
|
4 (Milewski, personal communication)
|
The above table shows that the highest per capita emitters outside the Enriched World needed to be the countries set severe reduction targets at the first Kyōtō Protocol. Apart from Australia, South Africa and Malaysia, these nations correspond to the oil exporters (OPEC), although low-emissions Nigeria can be exempted. If we follow from the table above, we can estimate requisite emissions reductions in the table below:
Country | Requisite Kyōtō emissions target (relative to 1985-1995) | Actual Kyōtō emissions target | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Wealthy Lithophile Metal Exporters | |||
Australia | -93% | +8% |
|
High-Emissions Siderophile Metal Exporters | |||
New Caledonia | -93% | -8% (as part of EU) |
|
South Africa | -50% | ∞ |
|
Namibia | -33% | ∞ |
|
Botswana | |||
Middle Eastern and North African Oil Exporters | |||
Kuwait | -97% | ∞ |
|
Baḥrain | |||
Qaṭar | |||
United Arab Emirates | |||
Saudi Arabia | -95% | ∞ | |
Libya | -93% | ∞ | |
Oman | |||
Algeria | |||
Iran | -33% | ∞ |
|
Tropical World Oil Exporters | |||
Brunei | -93% | ∞ | |
Indonesia | -50% | ∞ |
|
Equatorial Guinea | |||
Gabon | -33% | ∞ |
|
Ecuador | |||
Venezuela | |||
Mexico | |||
Other Tropical World Mineral States | |||
Malaysia | -50% | ∞ |
|
Papua New Guinea | -50% | ∞ |
|
- allowed lower-income Tropical World mineral exporters to meet emissions targets at relatively low cost
- mandated large-scale revegetation of extremely ancient, climatically vulnerable agricultural soils of uniquely high conservation value in the West Australian Wheatbelt
- potentially lowered the severe education barriers to economic employment in the land- and resource-poor but uniquely eutrophic Enriched World
Targets outlined above would have directly cut global emissions by no more than the targets of the actual Kyōtō Protocol. However, loss of fossil fuel and lithophile metal sources would have necessitated much more efficient use and reuse of these commodities by the big manufacturing nations. One would expect this improved efficiency to multiply reductions far beyond actual Kyōtō targets. Had a substantial proportion of the direct and indirect cuts proposed above been achieved by 2010, southern Australia and Central Chile would not be facing runaway drying with loss of over 90 percent of their virgin rainfall.
Methodology for “Ecological Parity” Emissions Targets:
In order to estimate relative per capita greenhouse gas emissions allowable for each nation, I:- took the approximate average relative basal metabolic rate of that nation’s indigenous homiotherms
- it being assumed that the sustainable energy consumption per capita of a nation’s human population should be related to that of homiothermic animals having evolved locally
- BMR is the major contributor to faunal energy consumption, although field rates can be much higher in arid regions
- assumed that the allowable emissions would be proportional to each region’s average homiotherm BMR
- compared these with actual emissions to estimate the reduction required for parity with the ecoregion (Enriched) least above parity
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