Exporting Carbon
EconLog: Energy and Environmental Cost-Shifting, Arnold KlingDan Lewis writes
Even if we [in Europe] succeed in making big cuts in carbon emissions, these would not include the pollution created by imports. This is the accounting flaw at the heart of the Kyoto treaty. Globalization means energy-intensive manufacturing is moving out of Europe and into China. An imported MP3 player almost certainly requires more CO2 emissions for its Asian production run than it would have in Europe. Yet Europeans will be able to make the phony claim that they reduced emissions, when all they have done is export -- and increase -- them.This is a very good point. The same thing is done in the US with power plants just over the Mexican border and the importation of gasoline from foreign refineries. The government has made building economical power plants and refineries so difficult so we export the environmental issues to foreign lands.
To use an analogy, it is kind of like the off the balance sheet special purpose entities created by Enron to hide bad debt. As long as the carbon is off the balance sheet, don't worry about it!
Tagged:Global Warming
Tagged:carbon neutrality
posted by Jim VAT @ 9:14 PM
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