transcript

International Climate Action Forum

Climate Change: China's Argument Du Jour

Rich countries' invisible emissions

This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI's THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI's THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: All those Chinese factories are contributing to another big pollution problem – this one on a global scale. In the last couple of years, China has overtaken the US as the world's leading annual producer of greenhouse gases. It's widely expected that China will soon have to start capping those carbon emissions under a new international treaty. But China now suggests it should not be penalized for all the emissions coming from its factories, because those factories are making goods for the rest of the world. The World's environment editor Peter Thomson has more.

PETER THOMSON: It doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect the dots between China's growing CO2 emissions, and the stuff that the rest of the world uses. Just take a look at the computer on your desk, the iPod in your pocket, or even the shoes on your feet. There's a good chance they're all made in China. And their manufacture was responsible for a tiny sliver of China's now giant greenhouse gas footprint. But until recently, there hadn't been good data matching up China's emissions with its exports. Now those numbers are starting to come in. Glen Peters, of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Norway, has co-authored a series of recent studies tracking the growth in Chinese carbon emissions between 2002 and 2005.

PETERS: We find that around 50 percent of the growth in Chinese carbon emissions is due to the production of exported products.

THOMSON: Of that 50 percent, Peters says, roughly half was due to exports to the West, and the other half was due to exports to the rest of the world. And these numbers raise a difficult ethical and political question. Who should be accountable for the carbon emissions that come from Chinese goods produced for export? China, or the consumer countries, like the US? The academic question suddenly became a lot less abstract last week. That's when a Chinese climate official named Li Gao raised the issue during a talk in Washington, and then gave his own answer.

LI GAO: About 15 to 25 percent of China's emission comes from the products we make for the world, which should not be taken by us.

THOMSON: Note the last part of Li's comment: that responsibility for these emissions “should not be taken by us”, meaning China. Li didn't elaborate, but his implication was clear. And his comments set off a flurry of reaction from climate policy watchers. China doesn't currently control its emissions under an international treaty – neither does the US. But that's likely to change as the world negotiates a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. And China and the rest of the world are jockeying for position. If Li's principle were to be adopted, consumer countries like the US would have to count some Chinese emissions against their own carbon allotments. One analyst, who writes the blog “Chinese Environmental Law”, described the notion as “patently unworkable” and inconsistent with long-standing international principles. And a top European climate official, Artur Runge-Metzger, cautioned that the Chinese position on what have come to be known as “embedded emissions” could challenge national sovereignty. He spoke at the same event as Li Gao.

RUNGE-METZGER: If we would start having an approach which would say, “OK. You also take care of the embedded goods,” it would mean that we would like them to have also jurisdiction and legislative powers in order to control and limit those. I'm not sure whether my Chinese colleague would agree on that particular point.

THOMSON: It's not clear whether Li's comments were more than a trial balloon. But if China is serious about its assertion that consuming nations should be responsible for a share of its emissions, it could throw a bomb into upcoming climate negotiations. Elliot Diringer, of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says that doesn't have to happen. The Pew Center sponsored the forum at which both Li and Runge-Metzer spoke. Diringer says there's a fairly straightforward mechanism for assigning responsibility for emissions.

DIRINGER: The answer is to price carbon so that all goods, wherever they're produced and wherever they're consumed, carry that price with them. And the market then begins then to disfavor carbon-intensive goods. That's the direction we're heading in the United States with proposals for cap and trade legislation.

THOMSON: But putting a price on carbon, whether through a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, is itself a politically explosive idea. President Obama has included a cap and trade system in his 2010 budget proposal, but the plan has run into opposition in Congress. And just yesterday, at his White House press conference, the President indicated that he might not insist that his cap-and-trade plan be included in the budget. For The World, I'm Peter Thomson.

Copyright ©2008 PRI's THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI's THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World's Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.