Many developing nations, including major population centers such as China and India, are rapidly expanding their use of fossil fuels. Given current trends, developing nations are expected to emit the majority of global carbon emissions around the year 2020. However, developing nations are looking to the industrialized world to demonstrate its commitment to reducing its own carbon emissions, which are dramatically higher per capita than the developing world, before making commitments to cap their own emissions. Subsistence farmers are most vulnerable to changing rainfall patterns that may make their land infertile. Slum-dwellers in coastal areas or in floodplains are least able to relocate to avoid chronic flooding.
Undeveloped areas are least able to prevent the spread of infectious disease.
The actions taken by industrialized nations to reduce carbon emissions and the choices made by the developing nations regarding electricity generation and transportation in the next few years will affect the lives of generations to come. The leadership demonstrated by the United States in the coming months is critical to successful efforts to reduce industrial nation and cap developing nation emissions sufficiently to stabilize the climate. Humankind has a solemn obligation to improve the world for future generations. Minimizing climate change requires us to learn how to live within the ecological limits of the earth so that we will not compromise the ecological or economic security of those who come after us. The human being was placed in the Garden of Eden to till it and to tend it.