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Britain and other countries with lower emissions must not pass the climate buck | Letters

Oliver Mason, Katie Williams and Molly Berry respond to an article by Ajit Niranjan on how small but wealthy countries claim they cannot stop extreme weather events worsening

Thank you for Ajit Niranjan’s article (‘But we’re just 1% of emissions’: do smaller countries’ climate efforts matter?, 30 June). This helpfully examines arguments frequently used to undermine the UK’s and other nations’ plans for emission reduction. In my opinion this article misses an important counter-argument: carbon emissions per capita. This shows that, for example, the UK emits 4.5 tonnes of carbon per person per year, China 8.7 tonnes, United States 14.2 tonnes, India 2.2 tonnes and Vietnam 3.7 tonnes.

Many smaller European nations have similar or greater emissions per person than the UK, while remaining within about 1% of global emissions. If we accept the argument that smaller nations don’t need to limit their emissions because they only contribute a small proportion of global emissions, we are saying that small, wealthy nations with long histories of carbon emissions can carry on, but larger, poorer, recently industrialising nations such as India and China need to take all the costly and difficult measures to limit their emissions.

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