Climate Hypocrisy

There used to be a popular pastime for Economists to illustrate, for the 'man in the street', disparities in income. They calculated how many days the CEO of a major company had to work, before exceeding the annual salary of his/her workers. Similar calculations were done for, time spent working in the year, before annual income taxes were fully paid (before 'you stopped working for the government'). The results can be quite revealing. Euan Richie (a policy analyst at the Center for Global Development, Europe) has applied a similar technique to the vast energy inequality between rich and poor countries (https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/28/west-accused-of-climate-hypocrisy-as-emissions-dwarf-those-of-poor-countries). Richie obviously thinks that any pretence that UK and US politicians are 'world climate leaders' is risible. Each Briton produces 200 times the climate emissions of the average Congolese citizen. This means that, starting on New Year's Day, the Brit would exceed the carbon dioxide emissions of his/her Congolese counterpart by the 2nd of January. Richie includes this on his 'calendar', showing that the average UK citizen will have produced the annual 'greenhouse gas' emissions of conterparts in many African countries by the end of January. The US situation is even more striking. The average US citizen generates 585 times the emissions of their Congolese counterpart. They will get to the Congolese annual total within hours of the start of the year! It is important that these discrepancies are widely appreciated. One should emphasise, however, that Richie uses average values. There are also enormous disparities within the UK and the USA (these are also evident within many other rich countries). It seems highly improbable that citizens of the UK and the US will ever get near the Congolese levels of emissions. There is also little point in getting the Congolese to reduce their emissions. The fastest way of getting needed reductions in 'greenhouse gases' must be ensuring that the big emitters in the UK and the US (and other rich countries) modify their behaviour. We should be focusing on overconsumption, frequent flying, energy efficiency of buildings etc. We should also be helping poorer nations to develop cleanly, without going through the horror of an Industrial Revolution.