TEHRAN – Iran has proposed setting up an international fund to tackle climate change and taxing all countries in proportion to their share of environmental pollution, IRNA reported on Monday.

Those who harm the environment must be held accountable by an international body independent of powers and governments, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Expediency Council said.

Pointing to the industrialized nations of the United States and China as the main sources of climate change, he noted that some in the world believe that all countries should reduce greenhouse gas equally, but we cannot simply accept it because we are at the beginning of development and on the other hand, some countries have a much greater share in environmental pollution and climate change.

Most environmental hazards are caused by the Industrial Revolution, and the United States plays a role in 20 percent of the world's climate change but does not pay for it, Rezaei highlighted.

Carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high in 2019, according to a report published by the Global Carbon Project. The report also found that the rate of emissions growth is slowing down among some of the world’s largest emitters.

But climate change is a cumulative problem, a function of the total amount of greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the sky. Some of the heat-trapping gases in the air right now date back to the Industrial Revolution. And since that time, some countries have pumped out vastly more carbon dioxide than others.

According to the most recent data from the Global Carbon Project, the top five countries that produced the most CO2 are China, the U.S., India, Russia, and Japan.

While the U.S. has become the first nation in the world to formally withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. In June 2017, former United States President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, contending that the agreement would "undermine" the U.S. economy, and put the U.S. "at a permanent disadvantage."

The U.S. is the second-largest emitter of CO2, with approximately 5.41 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2018. The largest sources of CO2 emissions in the U.S. come from power generation, transportation, and industry.

Iran is the seventh-largest emitter of CO2 worldwide, producing 0.72GT of carbon dioxide in 2018.

However, Iran has in place legislation obliging the Ministry of Energy to increase the share of renewables and clean power plants to at least 5 percent of the country's capacity until the end of 2021, according to the International Energy Agency.

FB/MG