in fu yunwei and guo xinyu opinion piece, “critics fume in luxury as granny burns coal”, they argue that those in developed countries have “failed to take into account developing countries’ right of development.”

those who were sitting in the comfort of central-air-conditioned rooms and accusing developing countries of not doing enough to fight climate change, might have forgotten the fact that 1.6 billion people in the world still have no access to electricity and 2.3 billion people have to burn coal or wood to keep warm or for cooking.

“developed countries account for 80 percent of the total global carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution over 200 years ago,” premier wen said at the copenhagen climate change summit on december 18.

developing countries, however, only started industrialization a few decades ago and many of their people still live in abject poverty today.

thus, it is totally unjustified for those developed countries to ask developing nations to undertake emission reduction targets beyond their due obligations and capabilities in disregard of their historical responsibilities, per capita emissions and different levels of development.

read more>>

what do you think? china is now the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, but the us far surpasses china’s historical emissions. who needs to act? leave your comments below.