British empire’s past emissions ‘double UK’s climate responsibility’
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
From the Britain hating Guardian:
The UK is responsible for almost twice as much global heating as previously thought when its colonial history is taken into account, analysis has revealed.
The UK’s domestic emissions account for 3% of total world emissions dating back to 1850. But when responsibility for emissions in countries once under the British empire’s rule is given to the UK, the figure rises to more than 5%.
These additional emissions come largely from the destruction of forests in the colonised countries, with the biggest contributors coming from India, Myanmar and Nigeria before their independence.
The analysis by Carbon Brief moves up the UK from eighth to fourth in the list of nations with the biggest historical emissions, behind the US, China and Russia.
No doubt the Guardian would prefer that countries like India and Nigeria still lived the lives they used to hundreds of years ago!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Sp how do they know those colonies wouldn’t have done much the same without our help? Do they imagine they’d still be living in mud huts and cultivating crops at subsistence levels without our awful century or so long oppression😁
How is that even measurable!
With computer games – sorry – models, of course!
The British gave the world the Industrial Revolution (amongst other gifts). A deluded person could therefore possibly claim that the British hold ultimate responsibility for most of the CO2 created by most industrial processes over the centuries
and presumably ended the little ice age. Surely worth a gold star at least.
And also increased.the life expectancy and living conditions of all the people in the Countries there part of the British Empire
As somebody posted on the Spectator: “Well can we start claiming for the benefits Western civilisation has given them? We can start with the basics of life, clean water, sanitation, electricity generation. Then move on to transportation such as trains and aircraft, followed by the internal combustion engine and cars, motorcycles and lorries. Followed by the telephone, both land line and mobile. The Internet, television and radio.”
Not to mention education, a justice system, property rights. Then there are the costs of banning slavery and stopping tribal chiefs selling their slaves to Portuguese, Spanish, French and US slavers.
When the invoices are submitted and paid, the claimed “reparations” will look trivial.
Reminds me of this scene from The Life of Brian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
I was reminded of the Life of Brian as a list of all the terrorist groups that operate in Gaza but only Hamas is the official terrorist group of the BBC.
if it wasn’t for the UK’s industrial revolution, we wouldn’t have the standard of living we enjoy today. If anything the world owes us som gratitude!
The British Empire’s ingenuity has lifted most of the world’s people from starvation early death and disease. We would be in paradise now if evil people had not grabbed the wealth to produce weapons and provide us with a war every twenty years.
You Brits have raised 80% of the world’s population out of extreme poverty.
Thanks!
In 1913, Great Britain’s total use of coal, including exports, was less than 1% of what China uses today in a year. Having lived in an ex-colony in the 1960s, I saw little sign of a desire to return to the life of subsistence fishing in the pre-Raffles era – in fact the complete opposite. Singapore is now one of the most technically advanced countries on the planet with very high energy consumption per capita. In 1913 the world population was just over 1.6 billion. Now it is over 8 billion. Yet there has not been any remarkable change in our methods of producing usable energy over that period – in China Charles Parson’s turbines drive Professor Faraday’s electrical machines producing the majority of their electrical energy and their roads resound to the suck, squeeze, bang, blow of the good Dr. Otto’s magic cycle. And all of the rest of the world aspire to reach the metropolitan everywhere seen in Singapore. But, it is obvious that is not a sustainable goal with what is still Victorian technology and a population of over 8 billion. Yes, we have made vast progress over the last 150 years, in life support technologies and medicine that has led to the 5 times growth in world population. But, the one area in which we have failed is in power generation. It is now obvious that ‘renewables’ cannot cut the mustard, nuclear fission is used to boil water to produce steam and, the pipe dream of my teenage years, nuclear fusion, is also to be used to produce steam and, is as far away as ever. Science and technology struck off the chains that held most of mankind in the thrall of Medieval squalor – now it is demonised by those who wish to live like Hobbits in a mythical Shire, notable for having plenty of everything and no visible means of production!
Minor ccorrection nuclear fission?
It will be interesting to see the Guardian,s figures for all other ’empires’? Like the French, German, Belgian, Spanish and Dutch!
The Guardian only hates Britain and everything British.
Since world prosperity has been made possible by the energy derived from fossil fuels, it is logical that the U.K. is responsible for a disproportional share of of the CO2 emissions because, timewise, they started the industrial revolution before everyone else…!
Look on the positive side. Without articles such as these Guardian readers would be completely unaware that GB had the largest empire the world have ever seen and that we had given the world the Industrial Revolution which has lifted billions out of poverty and misery.
I thought the Guardian regularly has articles denigrating the World’s greatest empire. And they probably enthuse over the Roman Empire even though they ruthlessly slaughtered whole villages to make a point – thanks Bethany Hughes for that one.
Slightly off the point….the Ottoman Empire was very large but no one dares mention it because the Ottomans were a Turkish Tribe and not Western European ,so they can be excused from blame for anything( in the eyes of the anticolonialists.)
That Empire ended after WWI and the British were given a Mandate to govern Palestine but. Palestine itself was not new since it had been part of a large Christian Empire ( Byzantium)before invasion from Arabic speaking countries. The Byzantine Empire had included most Mediterranean lands .
Interestingly, it always called itself The Roman Empire though it was ruled from Constantinople by Greek speaking Christian Emperors into the Middle Ages,, A thousand years ,I think. Do the Guardianistas not read history. ? Who are the colonialists here?
The key thing about the Ottoman Empire is that is was muslim, and the lefties worship islam these days.
Any way the G can try to make us, especially the young, feel guilty about ourselves, they will. No wonder the young of the indigenous UK people feel remote from their country. It’s an absolute disgrace.
Foxtrot Oscar.
Many of these climate fund chasers weren’t shy about getting UK-made coal powered steam trains, ships and other assorted fuel-powered industrial tech back in the day. Now they point the finger and want compensation – not a good look.
Another grift of a ‘study’ by Carbon Brief, stuffed to the gunnels with green activists. They seem to specialise in making stuff up in order to demonise fossil fuels and the UK in equal measure.
Obviously their main Twitter clown ‘Dr’ Simon Evans blocked me months ago!