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We're not just outsourcing jobs to China and India. We're outsourcing pollution. So says a new analysis of global trade published in the March 1 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to scientists at the Carnegie Institution in Palo Alto, The analysis reveals that more than 2.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide are "used" by individual Americans per year but emitted elsewhere.
From my own travels I can confirm this. I’ve seen a good chunk of coal shoveled into Chinese power plants, generating electricity for the factories that crank out trinkets, clothes and gadgets destined for the U.S.
It's even worse in theoretically green Europe: each French, German and Spanish person consumes nearly four metric tons of CO2 per year that’s released elsewhere. It gives new meaning to the E.U.'s vaunted emissions trading scheme.
This new analysis reveals that the U.S. imports some 435 million tons of embedded CO2 emissions from China alone in 2004. And previous analyses have shown that as much as one-third of Chinese emissions can be traced back to Europe or the U.S. The Middle Kingdom may now be the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases but part of the blame for that lies with us.
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20 Comments
Add CommentWe all know that the blame for Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions rests on the backs of global governments and out dated fossil fuel energy producing plants. If we spent a fraction of the money on clean energy research and production of cars, plains, boats, trains, and power plants as we do on global wars over the centuries, all countries would be pollution free by now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo instead of complaining about global warming, why don't we force our governments to do something constructive about it and clean up our environment. We no longer need or want fossil fuel producing power plants. So why not decommission all our fossil fuel producing power plants and convert them to clean energy producing power plants. Yes, it will be expensive to convert them all at the same time, but can we affort to postpone and prolong this conversion any longer? The new clean energy power plants will pay for themselves in a very short period of time and start providing a large return immediately.
Clean energy power plants will also produce better health to the world environments and egosystems and better health to its living, breathing life forms and greatly lower health costs for all involved and living on this planet.
So why don't we just start this conversion now and get it over with?
I agree with your analysis. But the mentioning of the emissions trading scheme is really misleading (even though it's probably meant as a joke?). That's a pitty, because the trading scheme is actually an efficient mechanism through which European money goes into emission-reducing projects abroad, which would be at least one part of a solution for the problem you discussed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChina is also moving very quickly with renewable and sustainable energy initiatives - much faster than the U.S.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAssuming they follow through, admittedly a biog assumption, eventually "outsourcing" manufacturing may be beneficial in terms of pollution, efficiency and "green-ness."
I would say the author is to blame. He admits himself that he has travelled to China. This is not exactly a carbon neutral activity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTravel is educational. Humans become citizens of the World by travelling . People cannot allow themselves to be victimized by the ignorance of their birthplace.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs Candide points out "China is moving very quickly with renewable and sustainable energy initiatives"
This is much more carbon neutral than continually engaging in optional wars as does the U.S.A.
i feel rather disillusioned, we can't even get our governments to instigate decent free public health care, better non-private schools, reducing poverty in our domestic countries, a 'working' United Nations, and we talk about trying to cut global greenhouse emissions which is perhaps several orders of magnitude harder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishopefully the LHC will shift us into an alternate reality, perhaps something like Huxley's Brave New World where the 'job' will be done for us.
i feel rather disillusioned, we can't even get our governments to instigate decent free public health care, better non-private schools, reducing poverty in our domestic countries, a 'working' United Nations, and we talk about trying to cut global greenhouse emissions which is perhaps several orders of magnitude harder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishopefully the LHC will shift us into an alternate reality, perhaps something like Huxley's Brave New World where the 'job' will be done for us.
If all of the above comments are true then logically we should buy more things (like the hard drives on most of your computers) from China because they are moving so quickly toward "green" and it would be more eco-friendly. Right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis whole conversation is ridiculous to the point of absurdity. There is nothing that can be done to reverse or even slow existing trends. Rather than wasting time debating carbon, the discussion should be centered on what we must do to adapt to change. The countries that will be at the forefront in the next several decades will be those who recognize and respond to climate change by accepting it rather than vainly attempting to fight it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe all are responsible. We are all to blame. Every single human.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's in our nature to destroy what is around us. When it comes to technologically advanced nations, this translates into advanced destruction.
If Africa had developed technology before England, the US, or India or China, they'd be the main producers of green house emissions right now. Never doubt this.
The carbon-based technology is responsable. DECARBONIZE hydrocarbons by Pyrolysis to obtain coke and hydrogen. Bury the coke in land-fill sites and generate electricity with the hydrogen. Then you have a clean hydrogen-based society with no climate change until alternative energies are ready.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee www.eprida.com for details of progress in pyrolysis and projects to sequestrate atmospheric CO2.
The only constraining international treaty to date, the Kyoto Protocol is not only totally insufficient: the carbon market that has been established increases social and climatic injustice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first attempt by governments to come up with an overall response to climate change, the Kyoto Protocol (1997) enjoins the industrialised countries to reduce their emissions by 5.2 per cent in relation to 1990 in the course of the period 2008-2012. It would be trite to say that this treaty is totally insufficient. The 5.2 per cent of reduction in emissions do not put the developed countries on track for a reduction of between 25 and 40 per cent in 2020 and between 80 and 95 per cent between now and 2050. The non-ratification by the USA implies an effective reduction of scarcely 1.7 per cent. The objectives are weakened even further by the fact that they put on the same footing structural reductions in emissions, on the one hand, and on the other temporary increases in the absorption of carbon by the forests. Moreover, the emissions of air and maritime transport (2 per cent of total emissions) are not taken into account.
The reduction quotas assigned to states are still further softened by three flexibility mechanisms : the Clean Development Mechanism (CDP), Joint Implementation (JI) and Emission Trading. The trade in rights enables the enterprises of the developed countries which are subject to objectives of reduction, and which exceed them, to sell rights to emit corresponding tons of carbon. The CDM (and accessorily JI) enable the developed countries to replace a part of the efforts to be undertaken by investments reducing the emissions in the countries of the South (and of the East). These investments generate emission credits (or certified rights) which are negotiable. This entire dispositive is presented as the proof that the climate can be saved by capitalist mechanisms, by creating a market for the exchange of emission rights and credits. In reality, a large part of the rights and credits do not correspond to any effort of structural reduction and more than 50 per cent of the credits of the CDM do not correspond to any real reduction in emissions. As for the exchange of rights, the experience of the system implemented by the European Union since 2005 (Emission Trading) shows that, in practice, devices of the type cap and trade have as a result that the objectives of reduction (cap) are fixed according to the imperatives of profitability of the groups, and that the biggest polluters are reinforced by making enormous superprofits (which they are not even obliged to invest in clean technologies).
By these mechanisms, the Protocol fits into the world offensive of the ruling classes against working people, into the offensive of imperialism towards the countries it dominates and into the capitalist battle for the appropriation and the commoditisation of natural resources. The imperialist countries can acquire carbon credits at low prices rather than reducing their own emissions, while handicapping the future capacity of the developing countries to reduce theirs; the CDM and JI, linked to the exchange of rights, make it possible for the multinationals to open new markets with their investments in the developing countries or those in transition and to intensify blackmail towards workers; the development of this market in carbon opens an additional field of activity to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The bases are thus established for carbon neo-colonialism; the distribution of emission quotas between countries on the basis of the volume of greenhouse gases emitted in 1990 ratifies the inequality of North-South development; the privatization and the commoditisation of the right to emit carbon as well as the appropriation of ecosystems capable of absorbing it constitute a capitalist takeover of the terrestrial carbon cycle, therefore a potentially total appropriation of the biosphere, which regulates this cycle; Kyoto does not take into account the efforts that big developing countries are already undertaking. The ruling classes of these countries thus have a convenient pretext for burning fossil fuels or destroying the forests for as long as possible, in the name of development.
At the same time, the Protocol comprises a certain number of measures of regulation: the reduction of emissions is quantified and linked to timetables; sanctions are foreseen in the event of non-respect; flexibility mechanisms can only be used as a complement to domestic measures; investments in nuclear energy are not eligible within the framework of the CDM; recourse to credits coming from investments in forest sinks is limited (even banned by certain states)& The constant pressure that the capitalist lobbies exert against these measures expresses the antagonism between the physical limits that need to be respected in order to stabilise the climate, on the one hand, and on the other the logic of accumulation for profit.
Who is to blame? Or should we say "who is to thank"? Is it not possible that were it not for anthropogenic CO2's minor contribution that we'd be well on our way into the depths of a new Ice Age? That, after all, is the 'normal' state for the planet's climate if we look over the last few million years as a precedent. The notion that the planet is naturally supposed to be in a state of equilibrium hovering around something the majority of us would find 'pleasant' is a product of our anthropocentric tendencies in interpreting all of nature as if it were there to do our bidding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf warming is indeed actually going on we should thank our lucky stars, and in the mean time be working towards gaining the ability to harvest the bounty of energy that exists in nature once we leave the atmosphere and enter the realm of space. The sun's un-attenuated solar energy at Earth's distance is tremendous and is constant, but as long as we stay distracted by the anthropocentric perspectives about how things 'ought to be' we will never be able to put one foot in front of the other in concerted effort to get beyond the immediate barriers to our becoming the space faring civilization we are capable of becoming.
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@doug - maybe you should have spent more time in science class instead of comic books.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGetting rid of CO2 pollution is simple: Pyrolyse hydrocarbons or methane to get coke and hydrogen. Burn the hydrogen and bury the coke. It is not easy to decarbonise coal. Carbon capture and storage would appear to be the only solution for china. But for that they would need very big deep aquifers, which are surely inadequate for the ammount of CO2 produced? See www.eprida.com for pyrolysis information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we want to point out a single reason for global warming, it is the overpopulation of some countries like India and China. China is doing a lot to control it and its steps have been found quite effective, so this country goes out of the blame, leaving overpopulation of India to be blamed for which there is not only absence of positive actions, but strong incentives for population growths community-wise, to capture political power through more of voting power. The politicians are promoting such steps of many communities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ Candide; your quote "China is also moving very quickly with renewable and sustainable energy initiatives - much faster than the U.S." Very perceptive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour feelings on the several hundred coal fired power generating plants they are building at this moment? China's manufacturing, whether it's solar panels or stainless steel do-hickeys for ladies undergarments, is targeted at employing their low-paid labor force in the manufacturing of those devices they themselves find not efficient enough to compete with coal, but realize that as the world buys into the CO2 paranoia the demand will result in profitable trade. If a few get stuck in China and used to good effect (including PR) and where it makes economic sense, they they will do it.
These comic books you know so much about, earthling; what are your favorites?
I say that commercial airlines have a HUGE impact on global warming and no one seems willing to discuss it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are literally thousands of flights daily, spewing their emissions into the atmosphere.
Combine that with automobiles and industry and you have a recipe for disaster.
What do you say.
Doug is right ... at least up to the last few sentences. The Earth came out of an Ice Age some 18,000 years ago. Geology that everyone thinks is "old" is actually quite young. The Great Lakes is about 12,000 years old. Death Valley had water 2,000 years ago. Humans expanded in number during this nice warm period. But the ice cores and tons of data show that they cycles are about 100,000 years and it's going to get cold, very cold.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe CO2 hoax is a HOAX. Get over it. Gore has been pushing a HOAX. The UN IPCC and East Anglian College Climate Research Unit is an out and out FRAUD. Fabricated results and bogus models. Anybody want a used hocky stick?
The real polutants are SO2 and NOx. Hammer China and India to clean these up. The smog during the Olympics was not due to CO2 but good old SMOG.
REAL Science proves that CO2 is not the cause of global warming and man-made CO2 is but a tiny fraction of natural CO2. Hey, plants love CO2 and grow like mad with the extra trace gas. It is astounding that plants can live on a gas that is measured in 250-300 ppm. We need O2 that is many orders of magnitude in concentration.
REAL Science does not know the cause of the Ice Age cycles but proves that CO2 is not one of them.
The Vikings lived in Greenland and farmed where there is now only old, bare ice. It was warm then and the CO2 levels were much lower than now. The Inca's farmed the high mountains that are now all snow during this same period. CO2 was not the cause of this warming.
Get over it and address the real issues: Dirty politics and fake climate "science".
Move out of your Mom's basement and get a real job where you have to THINK.
While this is interesting news & certainly should give pause to contemplate one's accountability (am I buying these useless trinkets?).... what concerns me is NOT fixing the blame,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbut fixing the problem! Solutions, please. I am concerned with America's mindset to always find someone to blame, which always takes attention away from teh real issue: that a problem needs resolution.