Climate Treaty Should Target World’s Wealthiest Citizens, Study Says

The best way to ensure that industrialized and developing nations fairly share the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to set national targets based on the number of wealthy people in each country, a new study suggests. Reporting in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Princeton University said that the level of CO2 that each country is permitted to emit under a new climate treaty should be based on the number of affluent people in that nation. Most of those 1 billion, well-to-do “high emitters” live in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and other developed countries, but an increasing number of affluent people with a large carbon footprint will live in China, India, Russia, Brazil, and other developing nations. A climate treaty that focuses on levels of affluence in each country will help bridge a major negotiating divide between rich and poor countries, the study said. Developing countries, such as China, have refused to accept emissions limits and argue that high-emitting industrialized nations should bear the burden of reducing greenhouse gases. But wealthy nations say China and other developing countries should accept emissions limits as their standards of living rise.