New Study Speaks Out Against Industrialized Nations Outsourcing Emissions

A new study from the Carnegie Institution For Science reveals the scope of how industrialized countries are reducing their own carbon emissions by outsourcing work to developing nations.

Picture a child kicking a soccer ball against a fence in his back yard. The fence is a little over 6 feet high -- an ample size to keep the occasional errant punt in check. As the boy kicks the ball, he wrecks his Mom's flower garden, knocks over a bird bath, and leaves muddy streaks on laundry hung out to dry.

Of course -- as any kid is prone to do -- the boy at some point kicks the ball over the fence, where it is out of sight in a neighboring yard, but not out of mind.

If we zoom out, perhaps taking a vantage point from the roof of the boy's house, we can see the ball in the neighbor's yard. The ball still existing, though its location has shifted, and even though it no longer can be seen by the boy.

Outsourcing carbon emissions works much in the same way -- though not nearly as benign as a wayward soccer ball. The new Carnegie study shows that up to a third of industrialized nations' emissions have been reduced simply by changing the location in which they are produced.

This means, they haven't been reduced at all.

The Study in Summary:

“Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume,” says the study's co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.

Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by specific countries.

“Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO₂ emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China,” says Davis. “On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported.”

The report's findings echo similar studies from the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research and Oxford University, both of which found that the emission reductions delivered by a number of industrialized countries have been largely the result of carbon intensive heavy industries being outsourced to developing countries.

What This Means:

Caldeira and Davis raise a serious question: who is to be blamed for outsourced carbon emissions? The developing nation boosting its economy or the rich nation shifting attention away from its own back yard? There is no easy answer to this, but the study could have lasting effects on global environmental policy.

To be fair, the decision to outsource to smaller nations is an economic one -- a way of reducing ever-increasing labor costs. But this does nothing to reduce global warming. In fact, the study seems to indicate the contrary. Shifting carbon emissions elsewhere doesn't eradicate them. And no one can play the "out of sight, out of mind" card anymore.

As Bryan Walsh observes in his Time Magazine article,

"...for all the blame being put on major developing countries for failing to take on carbon regulations, climate change is still chiefly the responsibility of rich nations. We emitted most of the man-made CO₂ currently warming the planet, and even today, thanks to trade, we are still responsible for the majority of new carbon emissions.

As Davis and Caldeira write, "Consumption-based accounting of emissions provides grounding for ethical arguments that the most developed countries — as the primary beneficiaries of emissions and with greater ability to pay — should lead the global mitigation effort." That's hard to argue with."

Steven Davis insists the research underlines the urgent need for a global framework for tackling rising greenhouse gas emissions.

"Where CO2 emissions occur doesn't matter to the climate system," he says. "Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise."

Sources: Time Magazine and BusinessGreen