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Myth 5: It’s the fault of overpopulation in developing countries

Have a look at the climate calendar how our impact compares to other countries

“We have made no contribution [to climate change], but suffer the highest impact…the global nation states, must take action. If not we’ll be calling it climatic genocide.”
Atik Rahman, Bangladesh

Calendar page
The World Development Movement (WDM) has produced a CO2 calendar which shows by when during 2008 the average UK citizen will have emitted as much as a citizen from another country will during the whole year. They say,

“Whilst rich countries are responsible for most of the emissions pumped into the atmosphere it is the poorest, most marginalised communities in the world that will be hit the hardest by climate change. Millions are at threat from famine, disease, drought, flooding and ultimately death. WDM is calling on the UK government to take action to reduce the UK’s emissions and show the rest of the world that it can be done.”

Emissions per person from developing countries are still far, far below ours (we emit ten times as much per person as someone in India, for example). What’s more, the greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere are largely the result of the rich world’s emissions over the past 100 years, so we bear a historical responsibility for the problem we created.

Having said that, it’s true that China and India also have rapidly increasing emissions and that within 25 years the emissions from the so-called developing world is likely to exceed those of the rich world. But one of the drivers for this is overconsumption by wealthy nations.

Our demand for cheap goods produced in countries like China means that we are in effect exporting our emissions to them – they produce the goods and the emissions, we buy the goods and pretend we aren’t responsible for the emissions. That is why the issue of climate change has to be tackled on a global level, and why many people are searching for equitable ways to do this, recognising that the problem has been created largely by the wealthy northern countries. It is in the whole world’s interests to solve this together.

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