Climate crisis 'drawing nearer' due to oil and gas says Slater
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According to the study, high-income countries like those in US and Europe have been responsible for nearly three-quarters of the global excess in resource extraction over the past five decades. Despite accounting for only a fraction of the global population, these nations have extracted the most amount of natural resources, causing global environmental degradation and bringing the planet closer to climate catastrophe.
A study led by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel from Spain’s Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), has calculated the harmful effects of the “plundering” done between 1970 and 2017.
These researchers have tried to determine national responsibility for the current climate breakdown by calculating the extent to which each nation has overshot its fair share of sustainable resource use thresholds.
By calculating who is the blame the most for global warming, the report urges these countries to take the lead on stopping further environmental degradation.
Mr Hickel said: “The results show that wealthy nations bear the overwhelming responsibility for global ecological breakdown, and therefore owe an ecological debt to the rest of the world.
“These nations need to take the lead in making radical reductions in their resource use to avoid further degradation, which will likely require transformative post-growth and degrowth approaches.”
The study found in the time period observed, nearly 2.5 trillion tonnes of materials were extracted globally, with a majority of these resources being used by high-income countries.
Of these minerals, 1.1 trillion tonnes were in excess of the sustainable levels, with 74 percent of the excess coming out of the US and the EU.
The US is the biggest contributor by far, responsible for 27 percent of the global over-extraction, closely followed by the EU at 25 percent.
In Europe, Germany leads the way with five percent resource overshoot, closely followed by France.
The UK accounted for under three percent while it was still part of the EU.
Other notable overshooting countries in China and Japan, at 15 percent and nine percent respectively.
Climate change is deeply intertwined with income levels in various countries as low-income countries in Africa and Asia disproportionately face the impacts of climate change, despite contributing the least amount of emissions.
According to the UN Development Programme, developing countries suffer from 99 percent of the casualties that are attributable to climate change, which includes floods, droughts, etc.
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This raises ethical concerns for Western nations as the UN notes that the 50 least developed countries in the world have contributed about one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Global resource extraction, which has been rapidly scaled up over the past century, is a major driver of the climate crisis, with experts warning that the current levels of extraction “dramatically” exceed safe levels,
While the US and the EU have consistently increased the amount of minerals they are over extracting, their share of responsibility has gradually declined year on year.
This is primarily due to the exponential growth of China, which has rapidly scaled up its resource use during this period.
Shockingly, Beijing only crossed the threshold for over-extraction in 2001, and since then risen up to second place in the global responsibility for the past five decades.
India, which is currently the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, still is still extracting within its sustainable limits, owing to its massive population, with fears growing that India will soon follow China’s footsteps, which in turn is following the path set out by the US.
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