The head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer, has suggested that rich nations should be exempt from cutting up to 100 percent of their harmful emissions if they pay poor nations to do it for them.”I feel like that’s saying to the world, ‘Do our dirty work for us.’ That’s absolutely ridiculous,” junior Hannah Gordon said.

De Boer cites this idea as being the best way to deal with an urgent and very dangerous problem. De Boer claims that over the past several years, industrialized nations have made great strides to curb emissions, strides that are often costly, but less has been done to decrease emissions in poor nations.

De Boer said that from an economic as well as environmental standpoint, cutting emissions in underprivileged nations will be just as helpful as in wealthy nations.

“We have been reducing emissions and making energy use more efficient in industrialized countries for a long time, so it is quite expensive in these nations to reduce emissions any more,” de Boer said to BBC News. He continued to say that it would become economically attractive for foreign firms to reduce emissions in poor countries.

Environmental groups have decried de Boer’s comments as being a preposterous and dangerous attempt at solving a major problem facing the future of the planet. They believe that industrialized and wealthy nations, in addition to poor nations, need to be cutting their emissions now.

Signatories of the Kyoto Protocol, which include a plethora of nations both rich and poor, are required to decrease their emissions. Environmentalists insist on this important aspect of the protocol being implemented and enforced. Without the cooperation of all nations, the global climate debacle cannot be solved, environmental groups argue.

Guilford students have reacted strongly to the controversy as well. While many see the need for a drastic cutback on emissions, students see this as a global problem and not one that will be solved by rich nations defaulting on their responsibilities.

“If the richer nations have different standards than poorer nations it devalues the problem. Just paying for other people to take care of our problems isn’t enough; we have to do it ourselves,” senior Brennan Kahl said.

Many people agree that the world is at a crossroads for its future. According to some scientific estimates, by 2050, carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced by 50-80 percent in order to retain global sustainability.

Leading environmental groups argue that the help of all nations, particularly large, industrialized polluters like the United States, is needed to save the planet from impending disaster. De Boer senses the urgency as well, but has a clearly different approach.

To BBC News de Boer said, “The atmosphere does not care where emissions are reduced as long as they are reduced.