Poorer countries could very well owe compensation to the developed economies
The recent COP27 climate meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh floated the idea of reparations for climate change: developed countries would pay poorer countries for their losses from it. The economic argument for reparations is simple. CO2 emissions are causing warming. This involves an indirect cost that has no market price, an “externality” in economists’ terms. This externality should be compensated.Sign up to receive the daily top stories from the Financial Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
Let’s assume for the moment that CO2 emissions are responsible for 100 per cent of global warming and that this warming has only costs and no benefits. How severe are these costs?Article content Measuring average global temperatures is not simple. Surface weather stations are not evenly distributed across the globe, so it’s necessary to interpolate what’s happening between them. Moreover, they are subject to what’s called “urban heat island” effects — a station that used to be in a quiet country field but is now next to an asphalt airport runway will show artificial temperature increases.
But there’s a catch. As former environment minister Catherine McKenna used to repeatedly remind Canadians, the colder parts of the globe are warming faster than the rest. Global temperature is now 0.32 degrees Celsius above its average for 1991-2020, but in the Northern Hemisphere where most of the heavy emitters are, it is 0.43 degrees higher while in the Arctic it is fully 0.93 degrees higher. In the tropics, however, the increase is just 0.
that vegetation cover is up all around the world, much of it due to CO2. More CO2 means faster plant growth. It also makes plants more drought-resistant.of the monetary value of the increase in agricultural productivity just from CO2 between 1961 and 2011, based on 45 agricultural crops, is more than US$3 trillion in constant U.S. dollars. Agriculture is also more productive due to the availability of nitrogen-based fertilizers made with fossil fuels.
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