World's rich targeted in new model for carbon cuts

Researchers in the U.S. have proposed a new way of allocating responsibility for carbon emissions they say could solve the impasse between developed and developing countries.

The Princeton researchers estimated that in 2008 half of the world's emissions came from just 700 million people.

The Princeton researchers estimated that in 2008 half of the world's emissions came from just 700 million people.

The method sets national targets for reducing carbon emissions based on the number of high-income earners in each country, following the theory that people who earn more generate more CO2.

"It's fairer than some other ideas out there in the sense that we attribute responsibility for emission reductions based only on the number of high-emitting people in the country -- if the country has large number of people who are high-emitters then it has more work to do," said Shoibal Chakravarty, a research scholar at Princeton Environmental Institute.

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