Anybody who has watched the march of jobs overseas already knows this, but it is nice to see science has finally caught up with what we already knew years ago. Look for more of this if a Cap and Trade bill passes in the U.S.. Senator Kerry says it has a “short fuse”. I don’t think it means what he thinks it does. – Anthony
Carbon emissions ‘outsourced’ to developing countries
Palo Alto, CA— A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution finds that over a third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption of goods and services in many developed countries are actually emitted outside their borders. Some countries, such as Switzerland, “outsource” over half of their carbon dioxide emissions, primarily to developing countries. The study finds that, per person, about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are consumed in the U.S. but produced somewhere else. For Europeans, the figure can exceed four tons per person. Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.
“Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume,” says co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.
Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by specific countries.
“Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China,” says Davis. “On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported.”
Over a third of the carbon dioxide emissions linked to good and services consumed in many European countries actually occurred elsewhere, the researchers found. In Switzerland and several other small countries, outsourced emissions exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within national borders.
The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.
The researchers point out that regional climate policy needs to take into account emissions embodied in trade, not just domestic emissions.
“Our analysis of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption in each country just states the facts,” says Caldeira. “This could be taken into consideration when developing emissions targets for these countries, but that’s a decision for policy-makers. One implication of emissions outsourcing is that a lot of the consumer products that we think of as being relatively carbon-free may in fact be associated with significant carbon dioxide emissions.”
“Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system,” adds Davis. “Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.”
The report is published online in the March 1, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
I think this story needs to be filed under the “Well, duh!” category.
Carbon dioxide trading schemes have resulted in the perfect economic bubble, because we are trading, literally, bubbles. It’s a new and improved economic bubble, though, brought to you by Climate Change Science. You think human beings would learn, but they don’t.
Agree,
I think every carbon based legislation should also include an “Economic Impact Report” stating just how much the proposed legislation will cost the economy per capita
Reminds me of the story of the Xhosa, who on the strength of a vision destroyed all their cattle, their whole livelihood. It was discussed here last summer:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-parallels-in-our-time-the-killing-of-of-cattle-vs-carbon/#more-8702
Our current obsession with ‘carbon’ (CO2) is frighteningly similar, both in its irrational basis and in its possible consequences.
It has to be pointed out, at every step and at every level, that ‘carbon’ is NOT a problem!. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, does NOT cause the climate to change, and does NOT need to be controlled.
This of course flies in the face of the moneyed elite, who have visions of ‘carbon’ trading dancing in their heads.
It needs to be shouted from the rooftops: Carbon dioxide is not only harmless, it is good for plants, good for the planet, and good for you!
/Mr Lynn (Cooking the Planet? Or Cooking the Books? New Climate Realist Store: http://www.zazzle.com/climaterealist )
That’s ‘forgotten’, not ‘forgot’ (even nit-pickers make mistakes!). /Mr L
Did a Kiwi mention cricket?he he.
I don’t mind my tax dollars paying for sport.
I do mind my tax dollars being wasted on green schemes that benefits nobody,and even leaves some people scared to live in their own house.
Our papers are full of articles about how the government has wasted the stimulus money on solar and insulation schemes,not so much about the cricket.Not much crowing going on,I really thought the Kiwis would give the Aussies a run for their money at home,but they just couldn’t manage it.
Actually Patrick the roads in Tassie are quite good,some bad ones,but a lot has been spent on highways in Tasmania.
Could be why Victorian roads are bad,they’re just too obsessed with the footy(sarcasm).
I’m going to a family gathering on Saturday.There will be roughly 20 people there, of that 20,only 4 doubt AGW.
We will discuss the cricket,but we will spend more time discussing AGW and politics.
China plays the role of factory of the world in the UN plans for a Global Tyranny.
Looking at the map, they are right on schedule!
We can end this process at the next elections.
All we have to do is stop the pigs from flying!
(That is stop the immense amounts of tax payers money that subsidize this madness)
http://green-agenda.com
renminbi (05:45:14) :
I think the Chinese and Indian officials know AGW is crap, but they see it as a chance for their businesses to milk us by selling indulgences. If we in the West will oblige, why not?
Absent Obama pulling a successful Mugabe, I don’t see the USA going along with this. People here are not brainwashed the way they are in Europe-yet. Cap and Trade here is a vote loser.
The Chinese haven’t had a civilization-in various permutations- for roughly
7000 years with out learning about business and human nature. As we
speak, we, in NE oregon are getting every square inch of available land area
covered by wind generators. In the name of the Green Goddess and her Profit.
They are made in China and Vietnam, shipped over to the inland NW, by
truck and train, yet they power company is building a NG plant near
Boise, ID to cover when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine…
We (USA,UK,Austrailia,and EU) do not win-and all this will unwind…
China just laughs at our foolishness….
“Split Atoms, not Birds”
The UK economic miracle that is Gordon Brown delivered a major speech in the City yesterday. In it’s forty minute duration AGW/CC was never mentioned once, not even in a far ranging section dedicated to global cooperation.
With an election coming up and warming of any sort in UK a distant autumnal memory, this was perhaps wise, but there was still a need for surreptitious airing of the “C” word.
And here we have it! “Low carbon economy” was the new buzz phrase that enabled the nonsensical, uneconomical, hairbrained schemes that it encapsulates, to be trotted out with impunity in front of London’s best financial minds.
Our burgeoning trade gap deficit announced at that very moment ensures that this posting is bang on topic and perhaps indicates the method by which Gordon will achieve his low carbon economy.
Kerry is not as smart as a 5th grader. It takes 5 tons coal to make a ton of steel. It takes 200 tons of steel to make a wind turbine tower. We are exporting re bar and cement to China.
Actually they are buying a lot of OSB wood from us. Do not trust city slicker economists to make correct estimates. We are also exporting grain and food to feed billions. Ag products are also large consumers of petrol.
Lewt me see if I can get the thrust of this announcement.
China are making stuff that represent carbon emissions in order to develop their economy – and gaining all the economic benefits of doing that.
We buy that stuff and they get the money – which they use to buy more cards and coal-fired power stations etc.
And it’s our fault?
I’m confused as to the supposed moral problems and sense of guilt we are supposed to be feeling here in the west. I really am.
Yes, this is a huge problem for the USA. Corporations are exporting our high paying jobs to lower cost regions like China and India where there is no EPA to regulate pollution (I don’t include CO2 in that), OSHA to provide for a safe working environment, or any of the other higher costs associated with our more complex society. This is the reason why the USA is in a deep recession right now. Housing and other cost factors rose while the ability of American workers to pay for them fell as jobs were lost and wages reduced.
The environmentally concious thing to do is to return manufacturing to the U.S. where pollution is tightly regulated. We all breath the same air, and sending manufacturing to China where they burn coal unscrubbed and the rivers run foul with toxins hurts all of us much worse than burning it here with scrubbers. The enviro-nuts just can’t seem to understand this, and are hell bent on killing our economy with far worse consequences for the world wide environment.
OT – though related.
A businessman has been jailed for three years for masterminding a scam which saw tens of millions of battery hen eggs sold as free-range or organic.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/8562434.stm
Funny thing is… nobody could actually tell the difference.
LOL
Biofuels, solar and wind are unsustainable sources of energy. They can only survive with government funding. Its ridiculous to even consider them as long term energy independence solutions.
“To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.”——————Reads like global wealth redistribution to me…………
“The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.”……I’m angered by that statement, not because I don’t believe the statement(I think its pretty close.) nor by fact that the U.S. not only emits but causes others to emit CO2, but by the inequity of the statement. If the U.S. or any other national economy wants to recover from recent economic falterings, we need to emit more CO2 than to cause being emitted. Of course, we could simplify it by stating there is a trade imbalance and CO2 emissions = economic growth.
Policy Maker == Tyrant
The point of this diagram is: when the West produces anything for anyone, it’s responsible for the carbon emissions, and when the rest of the world produces anything that the West buys, the West is also responsible. Fancy that.
HereticFringe: “Corporations are exporting our high paying jobs to lower cost regions … This is the reason why the USA is in a deep recession right now.”
That is the long-term reason why the US is in terminal economic decline, but the short-term reason for the current recession, is that the US like the UK, used a borrow-to-boom economics to create a temporary rise in GDP by injecting money into the economy from outside by encouraging personal & company debt.
But the banking crisis put a temporary halt to increasing debt levels so that debt-boost to the US/UK GDP ceased aka a recession.
This really is the economics of the madhouse. It is borrowing in order to boost consumption, which boosts the “debteconomy” of the US/UK, transferring real wealth to China, who then has a surplus of money which guess what? They lend to the US/UK consumers through our banking system, in order that we can borrow it, to spend on importing more Chinese goods.
And as everyone knows, loan sharks are the most pleasant people when you borrow from them, but when you find you don’t have any employment to pay them back, they will take far more than their economic pound of flesh.
In a real sense, the greed of the US/UK politician/public and their addiction to more debt will succeed in destroying the capitalist west in the 21st century in a way that could the communist East was unable to achieve in the 20th century.
Or as confusion says: the way to destroy capitalism, is to set the market forces of capitalism to devour its capital … and to help it along make them feel guilty about the manufacturing output that is the bedrock of any real economy by convincing them an innocuous gas called CO2 is bad
It’s all a bunch of B. S., smoke and mirrors.
And, you know who takes it in the shorts at the end?
Everyday Americans.
Al Gore?
He’ll be living in his energy intensive mansion, riding in limousines, and flying in private jets.
Democrats are betraying the blue-collar workers they supposedly claim to represent. They don’t.
Interesting. Many times I have tried to understand the ‘agenda’ behind AGW. At least for me it wasn’t climate change. I guess I’m too old and had seen our media cry Ice Age! before. But one thing seems to always hold true throughout history – Follow the Money.
Global trade is huge and the developed countries have been losing manufacturing jobs since WWII. ( Review the EMPLOYMENT section at this link – http://economicedge.blogspot.com/2009/12/state-of-union-in-charts.html ) Directly the developed countries do not want a trade war. Everyone loses. But how to level the playing field? Tracking carbon dioxide emissions to the source is not about AGW. It is about leveling the economic playing field, indirectly. The Carnegie Institution study is the embodiment of the political/economic agenda.
…..”They said the IPCC report considered that, based on current trends, summer heat events such as 2003 (which led to 2,000 additional deaths in the UK and more than 35,000 across Europe) were expected to be considered normal by the 2040s….”
Ya’ think an increasing world population and/or an increasing fraction of unprotected people susceptible to “heat” effects in particular countries – such as “the elderly” in a country with even a stable population number – might mean that “heat related” deaths would increase regardless of any increase in temperatures or duration of summer heat events”? Naw.
Most large scale industrial production today is done by computer controlled machinery. The biggest costs in the process is where the machinery sits, the taxes paid on the spot of ground the factory is built on. And the USA has the biggest tax bill of them all. And soon with our new Oppressive leaders, the highest energy costs of them all — Hey maybe that is why we are making monuments of all our natural resources.
And so what the USA loss is, isn’t the 20 cent an hour manufacturing jobs, it’s the $50 an hour engineering jobs that it takes to design, build and maintain the computers and robot machinery that do the work. The manual labor needed is very small, unless you use slaves for everything ^_^.
Have you seen a modern automobile manufacturing facility lately?
J.Peden: summer heat events such as 2003 (which led to 2,000 additional deaths in the UK and more than 35,000 across Europe) were expected to be considered normal by the 2040s….”
And Age Concern say that 23,000 people die each year from the cold, and I believe the figure this last winter was estimated to be 40,000. And … Note, the yearly number of deaths, due to cold, is 10x the one single summer of warmth. And the increase is deaths (17,000) is again an order of magnitude more than that due to any imagined warming.
Yet when I went to read up on the “scientific” literature, of the 100 or so papers I read, not one mentioned reductions in winter deaths, whilst I think a majority mentioned the deaths from heat.
This is how we know all the papers on suggested effects of warming are just propaganda dressed up as science.
It could be even more sinister than purely economics.
When the Western economies collapse, they will not be able to defend themselves so readily. World conquest aspirations then become manifest.
Europe will never see it coming. They never do.
Some of the financial and policy follies of AGW are well chronicled by Richard North at
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com
His recent story about the Welsh suggested that they keep all their cattle indoors to “capture methane emissions” really takes the biscuit.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/they-are-serious.html
Frequently, in the worlds of pure science and political and military power things get complicated and very confusing. About the complicated and very confusing aspects of pure science I’m a dunce. About the other, I think I can help –
Political and military power can be simplified by looking at and considering three things: population, technology, and money.
The only Superpower in the world today (There Can Be Only One;-) is China. The West has sold itself into slavery for the sake of it’s pathetic wanton lifestyle(s) and wasteful ways, and the Third World has been forced along into bondage with us for want of any means to really object.
The Carbon Credits Scheme was/is the iceing on the cake giving the Chinese the whole kit and kabudle. Welcome to the new World Order. Remember being told that Freedom never was and never will be free? Just like everything else in life?
It really does matter who the top dog in the kennel is, doesn’t it?