Trade and Climate Change: It's Complicated

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At the Copenhagen climate change conference next week, world leaders will negotiate who should make the biggest sacrifices to lower their emissions. The prevailing theory is that countries such as China and India should lead the effort, because they churn out the most greenhouse gases. But as a new report points out, this argument denies an essential fact: That much of those emissions are because of exports to developed nations like the United States.
 
The point has been broached before, notably this summer, when Commerce Secretary Gary Locke suggested the United States pony up for some of China's emissions. He was swiftly shot by down the Obama administration. But the study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, makes an especially compelling case for a connection between the two.
 
Half of the growth in Chinese emissions between 2002 and 2005, for instance, was due to exports—a share that has no doubt grown in recent years. In 2005 nearly a third of the country's total emissions came from producing goods for other countries. Within-country emissions in the United States, on the other hand, grew just 6 percent between 1995 and 2004, while their emissions from consumption grew nearly three times that.
 
Of course, our globalized world depends on thriving international trade. And it's true that heavily exporting nations could find more eco-friendly ways to handle their production. But these nations also wouldn't need to export as much if consumption-machines like the United States weren't so dependent on them to do so.
 
Need proof? So far this year, the United States has spent more than $316.5 billion importing consumer goods—including $23.6 billion on toys, games and sporting goods; $6.2 billion on jewelry; and $10.4 billion on footwear. We even spent more than $1 billion importing rugs. (Here is a complete list of U.S. consumption, including pleasure boats, cookware, and cosmetics (pdf).)
 
Yes, some of this is necessary, but I have a hard time believing all of it is—especially with the holiday season once again ringing the bell of hyper-consumerism.
 
In other words, developed nations need to remember that all their products stamped "Made In China" were, well, made in China…and that it comes at an environmental cost.
 
(Photo by Robert Scoble; Seagate Wuxi China Factory Tour (Flickr))
 
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