China is the world's carbon emission scapegoat
China is producing almost one third of total carbon emissions on this planet. But just because carbon is emitted there, it is not necessarily caused by Chinese people. Indeed, the economic growth of the country is all about an export orientated, energy intensive - and so carbon intensive - development model. Japan and Korea have done the same. India is on track, too.
Credits to Marian Kamensky
I am just back from a short vacation and while basking under Mediterranean sunshine, I had the pleasure to read Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change. In his book, Oxford Professor Dieter Helm takes an unconventional and sharp position on the stereotypes of climate change. You know what? I couldn’t resist to share one of the key messages with you. It is about carbon production versus carbon consumption and the (misleading) role attributed to China in this regard.
It is well known that China's economy is changing rapidly: slower population growth, more domestic consumption, and fewer savings. But all those ships sailing out of Chinese harbors carrying steel, aluminium, petrochemicals are not produced solely for the benefit of Chinese people. Instead, they are meeting the unstoppable demand coming from European and American citizens.
Let’s take the UK as example. If you read the newspapers or listen to Sir Boris Johnson, it seems that the UK has proved the world how to decarbonize its economy. It set a unilateral territorial carbon production target in line with the Paris Agreement. Now, the UK pretends to have reduced emissions virtually more than anyone else on the planet. Sounds great, doesn’t it? How can it be so straightforward? Well, if we look closely at what has been happening then things do not seem so rosy.
Over the past 30 years, the UK has gradually deindustrialized. In particular, it exited from energy - therefore carbon - intensive industry. Today, more than 70% of UK’s GDP comes from the service sector and only a minor portion from manufacturing. The UK has simply swapped domestic production for import. It does not produce much steel, aluminium, fertilizers, and it even imports quite a lot of cement now. Go back 30 years and the story was very different.
This shows that carbon territorial production is not the right goal of climate change policy. If a country unilaterally reduces its emissions, it will not necessarily stop causing climate change. What really matters is the national and thus individual carbon consumption. Said differently, it is irrelevant whether the steel is made in Sheffield in the UK or in the city of Tangshan in China. It’s just steel and the only relevant point is the amount of emissions it generates. Outsourcing its production to the other side of the world and shipping it all the way back, is not a great idea. Importing is actually worse than producing domestically. So, it’s possible to reduce your carbon territorial production and increase the amount of climate change you are causing.
And here the circle closes. To address climate change, we need to reduce our carbon consumption. If we want to do that unilaterally – as it is today - we need to ensure that imports of carbon intensive products are treated on the same basis as domestic production. That is a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). It is not sufficient but very close to necessary. By applying carbon prices to trades, people prefer to pay their own carbon price at home rather than the carbon adjustment on the imported good. So, wherever the carbon is produced in the world, what matters is the level of carbon added in the atmosphere. Alias the point is not the carbon production, as today, but the carbon consumption.
And this brings it back to you and me. If you buy meat for a meal, you are causing the emissions that the farmer made to produce that meat for you. If you fly every second weekend to a different capital in Europe, you are responsible for the (huge) emissions of those flights. So, we need to face the uncomfortable root cause of climate change: our unsustainable carbon lifestyle. This means that the ultimate polluters of this crisis are you and me. Companies are just doing what we ask them to do.
When you got a moment, start writing a carbon diary. Try taking a few days and joke down how much carbon is in your average daily life. Consider the clothes you are wearing, the breakfast you enjoy while checking emails, the car you use to get to the office and so on. Then imagine in 2050, rewriting that diary with no carbon in it. You will realize how titanic is the challenge in front of us. And it is not only Chinese’s fault.
