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

Obama Will Likely Allow States to Toughen Air Quality Rules

California and other states will most likely be given permission to toughen air quality rules soon after Obama takes office, forcing automakers to produce cars that are far more efficient than those allowed under current federal standards.

More than a dozen states will be able to enforce their own greenhouse gas emission standards on automobiles, rules that are key to fighting global warming.

From the LA Times:

“This is an essential piece of the nation’s environmental strategy,” said Tim Carmichael, president of the Coalition for Clean Air. Environmentalists estimate that cars create about a quarter of U.S. carbon emissions.

But it’s a nightmare scenario for automakers, which argue that complying with the California guidelines would create regulatory headaches and a technology burden that could add at least $1,000 and as much as $5,000 to the cost of each vehicle.

As such, the prospect of the waiver is creating a fierce debate about automotive regulation, pitting concerns about the environment against the deeply troubled finances of an industry that has thrown itself at the mercy of Washington just to remain solvent.

Unsurprisingly, automakers are calling foul, with GM corporate spokesperson Greg Martin complaining that asking GM to meet California emissions standards is like asking a cancer patient to “finish chemo and then go run the Boston Marathon.” Automakers have opposed California’s standards in court for years.

Honda is the only company that has accepted reality and begun preparing for new emissions standards, making plans for a fleet that’s even more efficient than is called for under the strict California rules.

Mary Nichols, chairwoman of California’s Air Resources Board, says the likelihood of getting a waver from new EPA chief Lisa Jackson to go ahead with implementing and forcing their emissions regulations is over 95%.

Automakers have had years and years to prepare for this, and most of them have dragged their feet, focusing on fighting the rules instead of figuring out how to comply with them. It’s about time they were forced to be accountable for the damage their vehicles are doing to the environment.

As Honda’s VP of government affairs said, “Any company that is not assuming a constant rate of improvement in fuel economy and carbon emissions is making a big mistake.”

Link [LA Times]
Photo credit: LeHighValleyLive.com

Youth Demonstrate in Support of Survival of All Countries and Peoples

An update from SustainUS delegates at the UN climate talks in Poland:

I have to say, I’m pretty disgusted with many of the developed countries speaking. They are more than willing to talk about progress and how much they care – and then block text necessary for the survival of entire countries. Countries are essentially trying to decide if the most vulnerable countries are worth saving at this point. For some countries, such as Australia, Canada, Japan, and the US, Christmas bonuses for multi-millionaires and bailing large corporations out of debt seem to be more important.

As one minister from a small island put it this morning, we are talking about mass murder here. Mass murder of nations, peoples, and cultures. Again, as another minister put it, we are asking small island states to sign onto a suicide pact with the way negotiations are currently proceeding. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to put everything I have into reshaping the political landscape over the next year so that we leave no one behind in this process. Survival is non-negotiable.

Negotiations are moving slow here, which is bad. We have less than a year at this point to get an incredibly strong international climate agreement – that is not a very long time. Especially with the level of ambition many developed countries have. But there is hope!

As negotiators hide behind technicalities and acronyms, youth are uniting around a strong shared vision for an equitable climate treaty. We need to make sure Poznan and the year leading up to Copenhagen are both successful. We need leadership and a commitment by parties to the survival of all countries and peoples.

Yesterday, international youth launched a new campaign – the Survival Campaign. The international youth delegation is asking all countries to commit to ’safeguard the future of all countries and peoples’. Committing countries to negotiating based on this principle means they have to do more, faster. That would mean, for example, taking responsibility to prevent small island nations, sovereign under the UN process but weak politically and economically, from slipping beneath the waves.

This is especially important for developed countries who must reduce emissions at least 40% by 2020 compared to 1990, with an overall global goal of reducing CO2-e concentrations below 350ppm. Developed countries must also massively increase financial and technological support for both adaptation and mitigation to help achieve this global goal in an equitable manner. Young people have laid out a clear challenge to these countries: take immediate action to safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples.
To ensure the principle is formalized we are meeting with a number of countries and asking them to support our message. We are asking countries to support this text:

I, the undersigned, commit my delegation to a global climate treaty that: safeguards the survival of all countries and peoples.

Climate change threatens the very survival of island nations and other impacted communities.

Join international youth to ensure that a global climate treaty includes the principle of safeguarding the survival of all countries and peoples.

We need a successful outcome from Poznan. Reassure the world you are committed to a climate agreement that protects the most vulnerable among us.

Ninety countries (and counting!) have committed. We also printed out placards that read “Survival” on one side and “safeguards the future for all countries and peoples” on the other for delegates to have with them at their tables during the ministerial high level segment. Unfortunately the UNFCCC doesn’t allow delegates to have unapproved things on their tables, so security took some away. Despite this, Uganda, Sweden, and Iceland placed the sign prominently in front of them during their speeches. Solomon Islands, Venezuela, Djibouti, Madagascar, Maldives, Costa Rica, and Papa New Guinea also displayed their Solidarity placards next to their own, displaying solidarity in the commitment to the survival of all countries and peoples. While not all countries have signed on (countries like the US, for example), we have received incredible support from almost every delegation.

The youth movement here is absolutely inspirational. That’s the only way to describe it. We are transcending our national boarders and working together for our common future. We are determined to remove the brackets that have been placed around our planet. We are uniting to safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples. We need all of your help. That means telling everybody we know about the issue and doing everything we can in terms of lifestyle, as well as political action, to stop catastrophic climate change.

If we wait any longer, it will be too late. Join us: http://www.350.org/survival

[compiled from a number of blogs from the international youth movement and edited by Casie Reed]

Wildlife Group Presses Poor Nations on Carbon Emissions

Third world countries’ carbon emissions are rising fast, but they’re insistent that they have a right to continue expanding their economies via cheap but dirty fossil fuels as long as their emissions don’t reach the higher per-capita emission rates of industrialized nations.  But, by some reports, countries like China and India may already be surpassing the world’s industrialized powers in terms of CO2 emissions.  Valli Moosa, president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told delegates at the World Conservation Congress in Barcelona that poorer nations need to take responsibility.

From Dot Earth:

“It is not good enough for big developing countries to take absolutely no responsibility just because the biggest contributors to climate change are the developed countries,” Mr. Moosa said at the opening ceremony of the congress, held every four years under the auspices of the IUCN.

“America and industrialized nations must lead the way,” he said. “Developing countries like my own must become part of, and abide by, the same set of transparent and enforceable rules,” he said. Mr. Moosa’s comments came ahead of climate-treaty talks in December in Poznań, Poland, that are aimed at pushing forward negotiations on a new global agreement on cutting emissions – and where concerns about allowing emerging economic superpowers like China and India to pollute as much as Western countries is almost certain to be a key stumbling block.

It’s understandable that nations like China and India are putting concerns about carbon emissions on the back burner, since they’re simply trying to improve their economies and by extension, the lives of their citizens.  And, cheap fossil fuels probably seem like the only option for them – after all, that’s how industrialized nations like the U.S. got to where we are today.  But, Moosa is right – developing nations can’t go on as they are without doing major damage to the earth, and we’ve got to give them a better example. It’s definitely time to start showing developing nations that they can be prosperous without harming the environment, and we can only do that by aggressively implementing green energy technology in our own countries.

Link [Dot Earth]
Photo credit: Flickr user Wolfiewolf

We Enjoy Modern Carbon-Emitting Life, and Poor Kids Around the World Pay the Price

The rich developed world has yet to reign in the habits that are contributing to global warming, and guess who’s paying the price: the world’s poorest children. As wealthy businesspeople, tycoons, celebrities and other privileged people enjoy large gas-guzzling vehicles, trips on private jets and other non-sustainable penchants, children across the globe are seeing their futures grow more dismal as each day passes.

From Reuters:

The UNICEF report “Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility” measured action on targets set in the Millennium Development Goals to halve child poverty by 2015. It found failure on counts from health to survival, education and sex equality.

“It is clear that a failure to address climate change is a failure to protect children,” said UNICEF UK director David Bull. “Those who have contributed least to climate change — the world’s poorest children — are suffering the most.”

The report said climate change could add 40,000-160,000 extra child deaths a year in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa through lower economic growth.

Of course, the richest of the rich aren’t the only ones to blame – we as a society are. The western civilized world continues to flourish at the expense of those less fortunate. The United States and China are at the top of the list, producing far more carbon emissions than other countries and showing no real signs of stopping. While the U.S. is starting to take measures that may help decrease carbon output in the future, China has yet to address the problem, and recent reports show that it’s only going to get worse.

Some of the great times that lie ahead for the poor include climate-change worsened malaria, less food and water to go around and an increase in natural disasters. Naturally, these things will affect the entire world, but as always, the poor will bear the brunt of it, being unable to properly prepare and react.

Since most Americans avoid world news and turn the channel when those Sally Struthers ‘feed the children’ commercials come on, it’s doubtful that this prediction will do any good toward reigning in the excessive lifestyle that has helped create this mess.

Link [Reuters]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons