I will still make that argument, why should a poor guy living in isolated tribal land in India find his dream of basic electricity a bit farther, while people in Europe can take the moral high ground and still pollute nearly an order of magnitude than an Indian.

Also the pollution in the last two-three centuries has been primarily First World led. Tell me how can Im as an Indian, tell the guy that he will have to wait some more time till we can get him to a basic living standard because cheaper options to get you there are off the table.

Per capita human emissions should be equal within reasonable bounds of geographical needs?

For that poor guy living in isolated tribal land in India, the cheapest, easiest, and most direct path to electricity - by far - is solar panels.

Burning coal also contributes heavily to air pollution, which is already terrible in Indian cities. And air pollution isn't just a minor unpleasantness - it has a real impact on life expectancy.

Europe, America, and China are taking real steps to limit their greenhouse emissions. It's working, albeit very slowly. If India and the rest of the developing world don't follow suit, it's going to be a sad story.

I doubt many are suggesting they do wait more time, just that they do it a bit better.

It is in the interests of Indians, as well as the rest of the globe, to try and short-cut past a lot of development that went on in the first world - precisely to avoid the horrific pollution that resulted from our lack of knowledge or greed. The first world should be assisting this.

By avoiding a lot of the smoke-stack development that the West went through they'd end up in a better overall place.

Meanwhile developing nations need to stop accepting our old crap (ships for scrapping, old TVs, stuff collected via roadside "recycling" such as UK cardboard) for disassembly on beaches. The sooner the First World owns the whole problem, the better.

You're pretending there is no a trade-off here, and that just isn't true.

Not at all. Hence my feeling the West should be assisting in making this happen - it's as much in our interests too after all.

You can't "do it a bit better" without human sacrifice today. At any level of first world assistance, that trade-off exists.

There's what's fair, and there's saving the planet.

Dont say "saving the planet". The planet will be here for a long (long) time. No matter how hot or cold it ll be.

Fine, saving civilization. Saving the environment. In the case of India, saving their kids... What's 2 more Celsius going to mean for droughts and heatwaves in India? Worst-case scenario we're talking about hundreds of millions f refugees fleeing countries that are no longer suitable for human habitation.

I'd say humans are much more resilient than you think, and Indians probably even more so, because they are used to hard life.

Or, to say it another way, many parts of India or other countries at this latitude have never been "suitable for human habitation" compared to e.g. France and her tempered climate. But humans adapted to this place, and will adapt to 2 degrees more if needs be.

This pedantry is not constructive.

I'm not sure it's pedantry. We're so used to the pretty Hollywood storyline that I think people assume that any climate issue will just turn out okay in the end. But of course, Nature doesn't have the capacity for happy endings — that's a human construction. We could easily become nothing but a footnote in the history of the planet, if we're not careful here.

Pretty much every species which has roamed the planet has gone extinct. Nature is tough. I think that's the point of emphasizing the phrasing.

Allocating every country the same per-capita quota of emission would be both fair, _and_ would save the planet, if the quota is low enough and exchangeable. But that would imply that we, the high per-capita polluting countries would pay money to poor countries like India to buy their excess quota.

Fair would also be to impose a maximum fertility rate. When the fertility rate is off the charts for the developing countries, unfair is the per capita quota.

If the goal is for humanity to survive on this planet, then clearly an exponential growth in population isn't sustainable. More fair would be to have quotas per square meter actually.

Sure let's have quotas per sq meter of arable land adjusted for number of crops you can grow in a year? Or better still on yield of the soil. Makes more sense than a straight per sq m quota.

Except you need the Indian and Chinese person to accept a worse quality of life for the cuts to work. It's tough to make that argument when it doesn't feel fair (and even tougher to get it to stick)

It's unfortunately true that you need to get them to accept a slightly stunted quality of life. But expecting him/her/them to do that without leading by example and also making sacrifices is the highest order of duchebaggery.

If weather patterns change to the point that agriculture collapses the poor jealous Indian villagers won't be any better off.

A voter living in squalor may not see it the same way, especially when the more fortunate ones are not making the same sacrifices.

If climate change gets worse it's not going to be rich people in London and New York getting hit with droughts, famine, tsunamis, etc.

It's really in their own best interest to take it more seriously.

putting blame aside, the behaviour isn't particularly surprising if we assume that people are more or less rationally looking out for their own interests:

it's not in my own interest to reduce my consumption and emissions. it's very much in my own interest for all of you to reduce your consumption and emissions.

it's easy for me to change my own behaviour, but very hard for me to coerce you to change your behaviour against your own interests.

it is in my interest to support global regulation of everyone's consumption and emissions, including my own, provided i believe i will gain more than i lose by participating.

Well China started investing in renewables some time ago and are now adding almost half the world renewables. The reality is though climate change can't be changed or reversed by capitalism fast enough. And because of the financial crisis over the last few years the developed world probably doest have the money it needs to finance the developing worlds energy needs. The next 1-2 billion people from Asia Africa will start using electricity a few times more than what they are now and the developed world curtailing their emissions wont be enough.

You are perfectly correct each person (or each state) following its self interest leads in this case logically to a slow motion disaster

Ethics, especially a la Kant, can help to address this shortcoming.

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law"

I like eating meal every day, but I cannot wish that this become the universal diet (especially of those 1b Indians). Therefore my ethical compass tell me to alter my food habits

But it's a false dilemma. Ultimately, it's possible to reduce our emissions without reducing consumption, either of energy or resources.

The coal lobby has done a good job of making renewables look like they're a significantly different way of life. At the end of the day your aircon will still run whether it's powered by coal, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro or literally anything else that can push electrons. Where the power comes from has very little effect on the utility of that power.

I recall a recent UK Prime Minister (Tony Blair) saying exactly the same thing.

Classic free-rider problem.

Your sentence is a bit ambiguous: was he shifting the blame, or frustrated at all the blame-shifting going on?

Frustrated at the blame shifting and calling for global action. Climate change is one area his govenment had a reasonable record. They put in place many policies to promote better emmissions, subsidise alternative energy and efficiency. They missed a couple of targets they publicy set themselves, but did make good progress towards them.

The Tories pretty much scrapped the lot the moment they got in power and are now full speed ahead trying to force fracking as the future. In locations far enough from London to not care tuppence about.