Globalization and Climate Change- Developing Economies

Both Singer and Stiglitz deal heavily with both the practical and the ethical side of climate change both in the developed and the developing world (side note: where did these terms, developed and developing, originate? I think the world could do with better names). The crux of the problem is determining who is responsible past pollutions and who is responsible for ensuring climate change does not destroy the world.

The developed nations- the U.S., Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc.- hold much of the burden for past pollution, as the Industrial Revolution was fueled by a perceived limitless supply of coal and petroleum used for the creation of infrastructure, technological innovation, and armament, which certainly are responsible for their "developed" status.

A much more difficult problem is current pollution, its potential damages to the climate, and the successive problems associated with climate change. Assigning blame and responsibility for current pollution is chiefly hard because there is so much of it and its scope is so broad. We can no longer dictate responsibility to a few nations, since a lot of nations are industrializing and energy usage is generally becoming more widespread.

The Economist has an article that has a general overview of the climate change problems associated with developing nations. Paramount is climate changes affect on the main industry of the developing world: agriculture. As the world's climate changes, rain patterns become more unpredictable, and floods and droughts are a more common occurrence. These changes lead to less fertile land and a lower crop yield. This negatively affects the developing world greater- at least in the immediate sense- because they do not have other industries in which they excel or the governmental infrastructure to provide overarching welfare. In other words, developing nations do not have the capacity to deal with economic change the way that developed nations do.

The other side of this proverbial coin is that, in terms of total carbon emissions, the developing world contributes half. As these nation try to rapidly industrialize, they, somewhat ironically, are using similar industrialization tactics the developing nations employed in the 19th century. This is now an equity and fairness problem, because the developed nations argue that everyone should now, since the discovery of the detriment of carbon emissions to the climate, play by the same emissions rules, yet developing nations argue the unfairness of allowing one group, the developed nations, to have industrialized through poor energy practices, while they are unable to industrialize in the same fashion.

Singer and The Economist article argue for a per-capita based regulation for climate control. Doing so acknowledges the historical pollution of the developed nations and aims to control future pollution by both developed and developing nations. Regardless, both the developed and developing nations are trapped in the mindset of assessing the costs of changing the way they use fuels, rather than understanding the underlying needs for overhauling the global energy system.