THERE is a number that should follow Pakistan into every climate conversation it has. Pakistan contributes less than one percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, yet by most global rankings it sits among the five to ten most climate vulnerable countries on earth.

Since 1750, four countries have produced more than half of all cumulative carbon emissions. The United States alone accounts for close to a quarter, followed by China, Russia and Germany. Pakistan barely registers, because its industrial revolution never happened at that scale. The atmosphere does not distinguish between carbon released building steel mills a century ago and carbon warming the Indus basin today. The debt is being paid by people who never took out the loan.

The floods make the arithmetic concrete. In 2022,........

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