Re: [asa] China Grabs West’s Smoke-Spewing Factories

DaveW asked: *It is not clear to me how to factor this kind of effect into
carbon emissions. Should the purchasing Country of the goods produced be
required to assume responsibility for all the carbon emitted in their
production???*

I think this is another reason why a global cap and trade system is unlikely
to be efficient. A Pigovian tax is likely to be more efficient. In the
international trade context, this can be accomplished by requiring tarrifs
on imports from polluting countries. The externality of the pollution is
then internalized by the polluting country in terms of fewer exports, and by
the importing country (which also otherwise benefits from the polluter's
actions) in terms of higher prices on imports. A cap and trade system is
more efficient than Pigovian taxes only if all the relevant parties are
required to participate without access to major exceptions.

On Dec 21, 2007 7:18 AM, Dave Wallace <wdwllace@sympatico.ca> wrote:

> From today's New York Times:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/world/asia/21transfer.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
>
> HANDAN, China — When residents of this northern Chinese city hang their
> clothes out to dry, the black fallout from nearby Handan Iron and Steel
> often sends them back to the wash.
>
> Half a world away, neighbors of ThyssenKrupp's former steel mill in the
> Ruhr Valley of Germany once had a similar problem. The white shirts men
> wore to church on Sundays turned gray by the time they got home.
>
> These two steel towns have an unusual kinship, spanning 5,000 miles and
> a decade of economic upheaval. They have shared the same hulking blast
> furnace, dismantled and shipped piece by piece from Germany's old
> industrial heartland to Hebei Province, China's new Ruhr Valley.
>
> China's worsening environment has also upended the geopolitics of global
> warming. It produces and exports so many goods once made in the West
> that many wealthy countries can boast of declining carbon emissions,
> even while the world's overall emissions are rising quickly.
>
> ----------
> It is not clear to me how to factor this kind of effect into carbon
> emissions. Should the purchasing Country of the goods produced be
> required to assume responsibility for all the carbon emitted in their
> production??? This may sound good but would be a bureaucratic nightmare
> and in itself would produce more carbon from the staff and computers
> used to track it. At the very least the developing countries must be
> included in agreements to limit carbon emissions.
>
> Dave W (CSCA member)
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Fri Dec 21 09:27:57 2007