At the IPCC: an author's view of the recent SPM negotiations for WG3 (Mitigation)

[GliderGuider]

3. The main purpose of the analysis was to investigate one claim in the article

"The figures showed that emissions of ‘upper medium income’ countries soared in the last decade."

Now, we don't know what their definition of "upper medium incomes" was, but this quick analysis doesn't appear to support that statement. The "soaring" has happened mainly in one country - China.

The reason I singled out India as well as China is that policies governing the increase or reduction of CO2 emissions are made at the national level. Per capita assessments can easily obscure rather than clarify that aspect of what's happening in the world. So while India has about the same population and per-capita CO2 growth as the aggregate of the other poor nations in my analysis, it represents a single national government. The rest of the group is represented by 20 sovereign states (aside from Chindia).

Here's the breakdown of the sub-$10,000 group:



It occurs to me that in the statement about "upper medium income countries" the SPM authors may have been attempting to single out China without naming it, if an income of $6,700/year represents an upper medium income nation. That would obviously be political grounds for demanding the exclusion of the graphs.

As a final note, among the sub-$20,000 groups, all the countries that have had an outright decrease in CO2 emissions are ex-Soviet bloc nations. Economic hardship would seem to play a large role in the reduction of CO2 emissions. Probably a larger role than any national policies implemented to date.