Climate change failure: The international finger-pointing continues
Following the G8 summit this week and the feel-good declaration that member nations will, or should, or could, or will certainly consider reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by mid-century (an environmental accomplishment so lacklustre that even George W. Bush approves of it), the backroom conflicts have bubbled out into the press.
On the one side, the rich countries who still produce the lion's share of emissions are saying they'll rachet down the noxiousness a few degrees but what's the point if major developing nations won't do the same? And they have a point; by 2050, G8 nations will only be responsible for around 20% of emissions, and eliminating half of that isn't going to unmelt any glaciers.
On the other hand, up-and-comers like China and India observe that the the US, Canada, and Western Europe have much higher per capita emissions than the rest of the planet ( the consequence of a relatively luxurious lifestyle), and are much better equipped economically to do what's necessary to fight climate change. Also fair points.
In a nutshell, the G8 is saying "we're not going to risk our standard of living to fight climate change" while the rest of the world replies "once we reach your standard of living, we'll be happy to do our part." Solutions, anyone?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-10-2008 @ 4:15PM
david said...
There's clearly some merit in the commentary here, though I'm not sure how well the "law of unintended consequences" has been thought through.
Let's take a CO2 intensive industry like . . . steel. What would be the likely impact of a "carbon tax" on the production of steel in industrialized nations? Well, impact one (due to the tax) would be higher prices for steel produced in industrialized nations. What would happen next? Not to hard to see that over time, as industries purchased more and more (cheaper) steel from less industrialized nations (that didn't have a carbon tax) that less and less steel would be manufactured in nations that had the carbon tax. Where would the production of steel migrate to? Unsurprisingly, nations that don't have the carbon tax (China, India, Brazil). The problem is, that developing nations such as the aforementioned are notorious polluters that use energy inefficiently. For example, on average, a ton of steel produced in the good 'ole USA creates, as a by-product, approximately 0.6 tons of CO2. In China, however, that same ton of steel produced results in 1.8-2.0 tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere (which says nothing of particulate matter, of which China's steel industry is even worse relative to its competition). So, over time (and by time, I mean, 2-5 years, not 15-20) less and less steel would get produced in nations that are relatively lower polluters, and more and more steel would get produced in nations that are among the worst polluters. Given that global warming and pollution are a global, not local problem, how exactly, does a carbon tax in industrialized nations (when developing countries aren't participating) help solve the problem at hand -- global warming?
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