Developing countries feel the heat.

The week's news at a glance.

Climate Change

Climate change is every country’s problem, said Canada’s Globe and Mail in an editorial. Now that science has drawn a definitive link between the burning of fossil fuels and the warming of the planet, you’d think there would be no more debate about what to do: Every nation must reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases. Yet the debate continues. Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for international action to slow down global warming. But at the same time, U.N. Environment Program director Achim Steiner reiterated that developing countries—notably China, India, and Brazil—should be allowed to pollute with abandon as “a matter of fairness.” Western countries grew rich by burning oil and coal, he said, and the East and South deserve the same chance. “It is an outrageous position, akin to arguing that developing countries should be allowed to employ slavery to build their economies just because some now-developed countries did so centuries ago.”

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