Responsibility measured in terms of each country's contribution to cumulative historical emissions.
“As of 2015, the USA was responsible for 40% of excess global CO2 emissions. The European Union (EU-28) was responsible for 29%. The G8 nations (the USA, EU-28, Russia, Japan, and Canada) were together responsible for 85%. Countries classified by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as Annex I nations (ie, most industrialised countries) were responsible for 90% of excess emissions. The Global North was responsible for 92%. By contrast, most countries in the Global South were within their boundary fair shares, including India and China (although China will overshoot soon).
High-income countries have a greater degree of responsibility for climate damages than previous methods have implied.”
In addition, there are “the emissions that high-income countries have outsourced to lower-income countries since the rise of globalisation in the 1980s.”
“These results illustrate what could be referred to as a process of atmospheric colonisation. A small number of high-income countries have appropriated substantially more than their fair share of the atmospheric commons. Just as many of these countries have relied on the appropriation of labour and resources from the Global South for their own economic growth, they have also relied on the appropriation of global atmospheric commons, with consequences that harm the Global South disproportionately.”
Now, how would this “small number of high-income countries” in an era of economic recession and stagnation, continue economic growth, maintain or improve their peoples’ standard of living, keep stability and social peace, become richer and stay dominant, reduce their CO2 emission to zero, let alone repair the damage to the atmospheric commons and to the global south? That would require not only a revolution in the way things are produced in capitalism but also a real revolution in the “way of life” (including the level of consumption) in the north. Are there any signs of this?
Personally, I doubt it. Once a vaccine has materialised, the wheel will resume its spinning as before the pandemic or probably more in order to get out of economic stagnation or erratic growth that had already characterised the pre-Covid and post 2008-09 crisis. Furthermore, under capitalism, there will be always countries that want to catch up with the rich ones, exacerbating the climate breakdown in the process.
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