New study from CB. Interesting as far as it goes, and good to see that they're starting to take account of these factors. As they acknowledge, there's a bunch more complexity in allocating responsibility for these emissions than is really possible to calculate with much accuracy. For example: where do you draw a line for a true end for colonial rule? I would say it still hasn't ended, and the colonial powers locked in patterns of resource extraction and trade (plus the elite classes to supervise their ongoing management) which determined the course of the supposed 'post-colonial' economies. And why does the US not figure in the analysis as a colonial power? Just because they didn't have official colonies in the way the british empire did, doesn't mean they didn't invade, occupy and economically dominate vast areas of the globe. FFS that's what the country was built on!
The article mentions 'international trade' as a complicating factor, but conspicuous by their absence are the words 'capitalism' and 'corporations'. It's a limited analysis focusing on nation states and the purported responsibility of individual citizens when the former are treated as mere technical boundaries, barely impeding the international flow of capital, and the latter are obliged to do what they can to sell themselves within that system or starve. It's not like it's a new phenomenon either - the conquest, rape and pillage of India was first set in motion by the East India Company after all... The analysis would benefit from a critique of capitalism basically, and attributing responsibility to the elites & transnational business interests that run the show, not the individual citizen/consumer/slaves caught in the net and forced to live according to its insane dictates.
Anyway, here 'tis. Long article so I've only copy/pasted the first bit & one of the many charts, posted as a vid. Worth the long read though, IMHO.
Revealed: How colonial rule radically shifts historical responsibility for climate change
Multiple Authors 26.11.2023 | 7:00pm
Historical responsibility for climate change is radically shifted when colonial rule is taken into account, Carbon Brief analysis reveals.
The first-of-its-kind analysis offers a thought-provoking fresh perspective on questions of climate justice and historical responsibility, which lie at the heart of the global climate debate.
In total, humans have collectively pumped 2,558bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) into the atmosphere since 1850, enough to warm the planet by 1.15C above pre-industrial temperatures.
This means that, by the end of 2023, more than 92% of the carbon budget for 1.5C will have been used up – leaving less than five years remaining if current annual emissions continue.
However, responsibility for using up this global budget is highly unequal. The wealthiest countries – and within each nation the wealthiest individuals – have taken a disproportionate share.
Previous Carbon Brief analysis already showed the US (20%) to be the world’s largest contributor to warming. Yet it implicitly allocated none of the responsibility for emissions under colonial rule to the colonial rulers, even though they held ultimate decision-making authority at the time.
The new analysis tests the implications of reversing this assumption. It finds the US (21%) and China (12%) still top – but the share of former colonial powers growing significantly.
The French share of historical emissions rises by half, the UK nearly doubles, the Netherlands nearly triples and Portugal more than triples. Together, the EU+UK’s responsibility for warming rises by nearly a third, to 19%.
India is among the former colonies seeing its share of historical responsibility fall (by 15%, to below the UK), with Indonesia down by 24% and Africa’s already small contribution also dropping 24%.
How cumulative national CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, land use, land use change and forestry change over time during 1850-2023, million tonnes, when accounting for emissions under colonial rule. The remaining carbon budget for a 50/50 chance of staying below 1.5C is shown by the doughnut chart in the bottom right. Source: Carbon Brief analysis of figures from Jones et al (2023), Lamboll et al (2023), the Global Carbon Project, CDIAC, Our World in Data, the International Energy Agency and Carbon Monitor. Animation by Carbon Brief.
Notably, former colonial powers such as the UK and the Netherlands are much more prominent in the history of cumulative global CO2 emissions shown in the animation above.
While former colonies such as India and Indonesia are less prominent as a result, they still have significant emissions in the post-colonial era, pushing them into the top 10 as of 2023.
As before, the new analysis is based on CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production, along with land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF).
It covers the period from 1850 – often taken as the baseline for current warming – through to 2023, drawing primarily on a recent compilation of emissions estimates.
The assignment of colonial responsibility for emissions is largely based on research into the emergence of independent nation states since the early 19th century.
Other key findings of the analysis include:
As a group, the EU+UK collectively ranks second for emissions within its own borders (375GtCO2, 14.7% of the global total). This climbs by nearly a third after adding colonial emissions, to 478GtCO2 and 18.7% of the global total – just behind the US. The UK ranks fourth in the world when accounting for colonial emissions – jumping ahead of its former colony India. Including emissions under British rule in 46 former colonies, the UK is responsible for nearly twice as much global warming as previously thought (130GtCO2 and 5.1% of the total, instead of 76GtCO2 and 3.0%). The largest contributions to the UK’s colonial emissions are from India (13GtCO2, cutting its own total by 15%), Myanmar (7GtCO2, -49%) and Nigeria (5GtCO2, -33%). The Netherlands accounts for nearly three times as much warming when accounting for colonial emissions (35GtCO2 and 1.4% of the total, rather than 13GtCO2 and 0.5%). This is largely due to LULUCF emissions in Indonesia, under Dutch rule, of 22GtCO2. Africa – the vast majority of which was under colonial rule – sees its share of historical emissions fall by nearly a quarter, from 6.9% to 5.2%. Despite a 21-times larger population, this 5.2% share is only fractionally higher than the UK’s 5.1%. When weighted by current populations, the Netherlands (2,014tCO2 per person) and the UK (1,922tCO2) become the world’s top emitters on a cumulative per-capita basis. They are followed by Russia (1,655tCO2), the US (1,560tCO2) and Canada (1,524tCO2). On this per-capita measure, China (217tCO2 per person), the continent of Africa (92tCO2) and India (52tCO2) are far behind developed nations’ contributions to warming. Many former colonial powers are also net CO2 importers today. While data on CO2 imports and exports is limited, available figures further raise their shares of historical emissions.
These findings reinforce the significant historical responsibility of developed countries for current warming, particularly the former colonial powers in Europe.
While they account for less than 11% of the world’s population today, together, the US, EU and UK are responsible for 39% of cumulative historical emissions and current CO2-related warming.
Many of these countries now have small and declining emissions. Yet their relative wealth today – and their historical contributions to current warming – are recognised within the international climate regime as being tied to a responsibility to lead, not only in terms of cutting their own emissions, but also in supporting the climate response in less developed countries.
The article below sets out why cumulative CO2 matters, how colonial rule changes responsibility for warming and where colonial emissions come from. It then looks at the impact of weighting emissions on a per-capita basis and accounting for emissions embedded in traded goods.
The article also includes a sortable, searchable table showing these key metrics for each country, as well as further details on the methodology used to produce this analysis.
Why cumulative CO2 matters How colonial rule changes responsibility for warming Where colonial emissions come from How population size affects responsibility for warming How emissions imports and exports affect responsibility for warming Table: Historical emissions and colonial responsibility Methodology: Historical emissions and colonial responsibility Methodology: Why this analysis starts in 1850
One of the underlying reasons for the 'tensions' between the American colonies in the 18th century, was the reluctuance of London to expand the territory of the British colonies westwards across the Apalacian Mountains.
London was concerned that this western expansion would prove to be prohibitively expensive, a military drain on scarce resources, and not least could potenitially bring the British Empire into direct conflict with the India tribes, and the the French and Spanish Empires.
That the Americans hav convinced themselves and British that the colossal expansion of the United States across the continent of North America, wasn't both imperialist and colonialist, is rather impressive. Historical misinformation on a massive scale, and this is before we even look at the famous Monroe Doctrine.
I personally ran into this a Uni. I got into an exchange (silly me) with the head of the history department, when I questioned his refusal to characterise the conquest of the 'West' as a grand imperial project that was worth analysing in detail, as imperialism, because to me it seemed to qualify on all fronts. In those far off days, I dreamt about writing a Phd about the rise of the American Empire across the continent. Not because I had anything particular against it. Those were, after all, the days. Only I thought it was 'amusing' that everyone denied, especially British historians, what was patently obvious, that the US was an Empire and had been from its inception. In fact it's also interesting why the British chose to ignore the character of what became it's main global rival. Maybe it was because they lost virtually everthing to it, finally becoming absorbed into it. I was so young and foolish then.
Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism, Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference. The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism.
Xiang explains that “Chinese” identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy—described as “harmony”—with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one’s position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today’s multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race.
As western global hegemony recedes and multipolarity advances along with the rise of China, politically and economically, I think it is important to try to understand the philosophical, cultural and political differences between the west and China which underpin their approaches to the rest of the world.
In the past China famously synthesised Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. For a couple of centuries it was the victim of western colonialism and capitalism. Its anti-imperialism took a Maoist form. Its unique blend of 'state capitalism' has made it an economic powerhouse.
Alistair Crooke, on here, and people like Jeremy Lent, have tried to contrast the Manichaean approach of the west with the Taoist seeking after 'harmony' approach of the Chinese.
I've not read it but this book may be an important part of increasing this understanding.
Of course, one should remain sceptical - but, in any case, I think it is helpful to try to see the state of the world from a non-western perspective.
China is really... big and a lot of people live there. It's been that way, forever. After a couple of bad centuries, it's back where is belongs, but with a long way to go, seen from a Chinese perspective.
The climate qustion is complex and at the same simple.
The West, having 'partied' for centuries, often at the expense of others, now wants them, the others, to 'pay' for the ravages of climate change caused by us, by them not using the fossil fuels we built our civilization on for centuries.
Suddenly, we pretend we've 'reformed' our old aggressive and very bloody ways, though Gaza seems to disprove this quaint idea!
Only the 'others' believe the West should pay for moving away from fossil fuels, disproportionately compared to them. Now it's their turn to... 'party'. The West will never accept this, now the time has come to pick up the tab for the party. This is basically why we're doomed.
One hears the fuckers on the BBC and the Guardian bleating about 'fasing out fossil fuels', this is bullshit. It isn't going to happen anytime soon. Expecting the countries who possess vast stores of fossil fuels to not exploit their wealth is absurd. Is the West then willing to pay them the same amount in compenstation for not exploiting their resources? Of course not!
re: parties, that metaphor never really sat well with me. Richard Heinberg's classic book on peak oil was called 'the party's over' despite providing ample evidence that the fossil fuel age has ushered in atrocity after atrocity and led to immiseration of millions, now billions. Even those on the top of the pile live miserable, grasping existences, always on the watch for usurpers and never able to slow down for even a second. One writer - it may even have been Heinberg elsewhere - even took issue with the word 'peak', implying that we have reached some fantastic great height with this wonderful late stage capitalism and the only way is down. A more appropriate way to view it might be to invert all those graphs and start thinking of it as a deep pit we've fallen into and now have to climb our way out of.
If people in China, other BRICS countries and the exploited global south can't imagine anything better than to follow the colonial west's example with the excesses of industrialism, toxic mining, environmental destruction and economic blow-out leading to mass social collapse, then we're all well & truly f*ed.
The idea that the hundreds of millions of people living in Brazil, Nigeria, India or China won't follow our example of material consumption, wealth creation and technological development, is, a best, a fantasy, or something far, far, worse.
I imagine they will probably try, as they have already been doing. Perhaps John is right and a China-led order will lead to saner, more mutually beneficial outcomes. I'm more of the mind that technological 'progress' is a self-feeding beast that once it gets underway follows its own logic and is not responsive to human attempts to reign it in or direct it away from its dystopian endpoint. Lest we forget:
The saving grace for the non-western world might be that there are no longer sufficient planetary resources to allow for this kind of 'development'. As long as the elites don't take away the ability to choose an alternative route to navigate the era of decline (or should I say, ascent, following the above suggestion) then they might fare better than us in the hyper-alienated, completely de-skilled & dependent populations of the 'relatively civilised' west.
IMHO of course...
cheers, I
PS: there's no such thing as 'wealth creation'. After the photosynthesising plants it's all redistribution - and they're only repackaging the wealth of energy provided by the sun. Western colonial powers redistributed their wealth (putting it euphemistically) from the exploited colonies and the wild places destroyed and replaced by domesticated monocultures, or outright strip-mined. Later on they tapped into the vast stores of wealth - ancient sunlight - stored underground in the form of coal, oil & gas. But industrial capitalism didn't create this abundance, merely appropriated and repurposed it. And once it's gone, it's gone, and people will realise again that there's no such thing as a free lunch.Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
Perhaps John is right and a China-led order will lead to saner, more mutually beneficial outcomes.
I never made such a claim. Nor would I. I referenced a book - which I have not read - which I thought might give an alternative Chinese perspective on the world to the western one, which has proved to be disastrous.
We obviously need a different way of looking at the world and a better way of acting in it. I do not know enough about Chinese culture and society to claim that it would provide a saner alternative.
If we have entered an era of synergising global collapses (as Bendell claims) we are going to need to be imaginative in our responses. We will need all the psychological and cultural resources that we can muster. These will vary from place to place. I suspect that other societies might be more resilient than those in the over-pampered west.
The elites will favour authoritarian technodystopian responses in order to try to maintain their control. A fearful population would likely be easily manipulated into accepting such responses especially if convenient scapegoats can be found. Different groups can be pitted against one another.
We will need to become much more aware of how we are being manipulated if we are to resist creeping authoritarianism and maintain some semblance of freedom and humanity as we negotiate our way through an era of collapse.
Apologies for misrepresenting your position. I agree it's worth trying to understand what you might call the personality of China and other cultures and where they differ from mainstream western attitudes informed by capitalism & empire - though being careful not to generalise about character traits that can't be the same across such a vast area.
I'm pretty ignorant about China generally. The belt & road initiative seems like an industrial megaproject tied to international trade networks and thus, to my mind, clearly unsustainable and an example of them following the western 'development' model, albeit without forcing it through by military might with purely extractive goals (as far as I'm aware). The vid I posted was pretty dystopian, but I heard that a difference between China and western so-called democracies is that the one party state is actually far more responsive to the will of ordinary people, and changed its policies without much fuss after people protested. Western countries have more political parties to choose between but they all adhere rigidly to the demands of the capitalist oligarchy and it takes cities being burned before they budge an inch and make some minor concessions.
Anyway, agreed about needing to draw on all available cultural resources in the coming times, and that it won't be the same response everywhere. Another good thing about collapse, potentially - that the global monoculture breaks up and differences between cultures start to re-assert themselves. Though that could go pear-shaped in its own way of course...