1. Hot potato.
- Subjects
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CLIMATE change , *ENVIRONMENTAL policy , *EMISSION control , *AIR pollution monitoring , *INCOME inequality - Abstract
At the beginning of 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released, as the main result of its massive Third Assessment Review, a set of figures that have become the most-cited numbers in the field of environmental policy, and quite possibly the most-cited numbers in any field of public policy. Two distinguished commentators--Ian Castles of the National Centre for Development Studies at Australian National University, formerly the head of Australia's national office of statistics; and David Henderson of the Westminster Business School--have put together a critique of the panel's Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. The projections imply that, even for the lowest emission scenarios, the average income of South Africans will have overtaken that of United States citizens by a very wide margin by the end of the century. In fact the U.S. per capita income will then have been surpassed not only by South Africa's, but also by that of other emerging economic powerhouses, including Algeria, Argentina, Libya, Turkey and North Korea.
- Published
- 2003