Developing nations have an opportunity to avoid long-term dependence on fossil fuel-burning infrastructure as they move toward economic stability, even if they are slow to cut carbon emissions, say the authors of a new paper in Environmental Research Letters.
Developing nations have an opportunity to avoid long-term dependence on fossil fuel-burning infrastructure as they move toward economic stability, even if they are slow to cut carbon emissions, say the authors of a new paper in Environmental Research Letters.
Countries with low per capita incomes can keep their contributions to global warming to 0.3 degrees Celsius with careful foresight and planning, urge Carnegie’s Lei Duan and Ken Caldeira with Juan Moreno-Cruz of the University of Waterloo. However, fueling economic development with coal, oil, or gas risks locking societies into a fossil-fuel burning infrastructure in the long-term, the authors caution.
“People in less wealthy countries are often motivated to use fossil fuels to drive their economic development and meet basic human needs,” said lead author, Carnegie’s Lei Duan. He continued, “While the direct climate effects from emissions from poor people will be minor, the world will care what kinds of energy systems they have as they increase their wealth.”
More than half of the world’s population resides in countries that have a per capita gross domestic product of less than $10,000 per year. But these nations produce less than 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Read more at: Carnegie Institution for Science
