Woj, about 75-80% of the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere already came from you, me, and the rest of us in the handful of rich countries, and we're responsible for the majority of new flows of GHGs as well. (China will surpass the US in the next year or so, but we have more than a century's head start on them.) Therefore the burden of adjustment should be on us - not only because of that record, but because we can take the hit, and we can afford to develop the new technology too. You may not like the vocabulary, but there's nothing demagogic about the issue.
[WS:] I understand that. No disagreement here.
It was the populist anti-market rhetoric and subsidies on consumption for small farmers that provoked my reaction. The non-market approach to energy production and distribution is precisely what caused the problem in the first place - cheap gas, coal, and electricity thanks to producers' ability to circumvent the market and pass some of the externality cost on the government (i.e. taxpayers) and thanks to the regulations keeping energy price artificially down, again for political purposes (anything from national development to votes). What is more, this kind of populist rhetoric gets on my nerves for the reason I tried to explain in the previous posting.
I pretty much agree that the burden of reducing greenhouse gases rests on the developed countries for two reasons: because they are major contributors to the problem and because they have the technology to do something about it. However, whether we like it or not, a big (if not the biggest) part of that is changing consumer behavior. And whether we like it or not, that change will inconvenience a lot of middle and working class and low income people. And since people generally do not voluntarily give up their life styles - they will have to be forced to make those adjustments one way or the other. Shedding crocodile tears over the plight of 'poor people' in this context is a prime example of hijacking this issue for political demagoguery.
Wojtek