Are China’s Skyrocketing CO2 Emissions Our Fault?

We Westerners just can’t get enough of cheap Chinese goods.  While we satiate our voracious appetite for cheap gadgets and gizmos, China continues to build factories to meet that demand – factories that are polluting their air and water and emitting vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Last year, China officially earned the title of world’s biggest CO2 emitter – but they’re refusing to accept responsibility for the emissions involved in producing goods for foreign markets. New research shows that about a third of all Chinese carbon emissions are the result of producing goods for export, pointing the finger of blame at the West rather than at China itself.

From The Guardian:

Under Kyoto, emissions are allocated to the country where they are produced. By these rules, the UK can claim to have reduced emissions by about 18% since 1990 – more than sufficient to meet its Kyoto target.

But research published last year by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) suggests that, once imports, exports and international transport are accounted for, the real change for the UK has been a rise in emissions of more than 20%.

China, as the world’s biggest export manufacturer, is key to explaining this kind of discrepancy. According to Glen Peters, one of the authors of the new report at Oslo’s Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research, about 9% of total Chinese emissions are the result of manufacturing goods for the US, and 6% are from producing goods for Europe.

Academics and campaigners increasingly say responsibility for these emissions lies with the consumer countries.

Despite this new research, world leaders may not agree to a deal based on consumption rather than production of CO2, and even if they did, it’s unclear how national figures would be calculated. But Dieter Helm, professor of economics at Oxford University, says there are ways to take consumption into account, such as a border tax or carbon transfer.

It makes sense: if those factories were producing goods – and emitting CO2 – in America, the UK and other Western countries, we’d obviously be responsible for those emissions. We don’t just purchase vast amounts of consumer goods from Chinese-owned companies – so many of our own domestic companies outsource their production.

Though China needs to take some responsibility for their own dirty practices, we can’t put the blame solely on them for rapidly rising emissions. We’ve got to get our crazy consumer appetite under control.

Link [The Guardian]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

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