[A]lthough greenhouse gas emissions can be blamed on nations based on the location of emission activities, these emissions are the effluvia of civilization and all its activities. In today’s interconnected world, economic activity in one country helps provide livelihoods and incomes for many inhabitants elsewhere, and vice versa. A substantial portion of economic growth in developing countries is attributable to trade, remittances, tourism and direct investment from industrialized countries.

For example, remittances, mainly from the United States, Britain and the oil-rich Gulf states, account for 13% of Bangladesh’s GDP. Absent economic activities that directly or indirectly fuel such contributions to developing countries, U.S. emissions might be lower, but so would jobs and incomes in developing countries like Bangladesh.

These linkages have had hugely positive effects. Greenhouse-gas-fueled economic activity has enabled today’s rich societies to invest in agricultural, medical and public health research that has raised crop yields and lowered hunger in developing countries; to devise effective medical interventions to address old diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, diarrhea and smallpox and new diseases like AIDS; and to provide aid in times of famine or other natural disasters.

Absent such economic activity, human capital would have been lower worldwide.

Originally published in the Wall Street Journal. Read the whole article here.

 

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