I’ve wondered about this for a while, as it becomes all too easy to blame China and do nothing ourselves. Now we learn that one quarter of China’s greenhouse gas emissions are produced making goods exported to the West. The report by the UK’s Tyndall Centre worked with 2004 data, the latest available. The percentage may well be higher now. The authors concluded: “The extent of ‘exported carbon’ from China should lead to some rethinking by government negotiators as they work towards a new climate change agreement.”
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.