Dec 16 2007
1990 CO2 Emissions: A Good Target?
The title of this post would suggest that I don’t think that 1990s CO2 emissions are a good target. Actually, I don’t have a problem with them - I trust the experts in this matter. However, what I don’t think is good is the US governments continued push that developing countries “share the load”.
One of the most frequent arguments I hear as an excuse not to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is that it will harm the economy. To zeroth order, it probably is a good guess. Any sort of restrictions that limit the carbon dioxide emissions (whether through a carbon tax, or cap-and-trade) will necessarily lead higher prices initially. I’m not an economist, but this is where they loose me. Higher prices do not necessarily lead to a decline in the economy. If that were true, the countries with the lowest prices (developing countries) would have the best economies. But that’s simply not true. There are many factors that determine the strength of the economy.
Therein lies the problem: developing countries need to be given the same opportunites as developed countries. This means that setting CO2 limits, the number of people in the country needs to be taken into account.
For example, in 1990, the US emitted 18.9 metric tons of carbon per person. [Wikipedia] This seems like a lot, and it is. But if you click the link to Wikipedia, you’ll notice a few surprising things - at least they were surprising to me. First of all, the United States was not at the top of the list (click the thing next to 1990 to sort the table decreasing by 1990 levels). It was 10th on the list. “Highly-developed” countries such as United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait were higher on the list than the US. Those living in Australia and Canada have nothing to be proud of either. You’re 11th and 14th on the list, respectively.
But remember, those are the number for 1990. Not much has changed in the interveining years (until 2004). For the most part, the per capita emissions have either increased or stayed the same for most of the countries.
The problem arises for countries such as China, who are building several coal-fired power plants per week. Even with this rapid development, China only emitted 2.1 metric tons of CO2 per capita in 1990. This is because their country is heavily populated. The population of China is around 1.3 billion people. Compare that to just 300 million people in the United States. Many of the delayers point to the fact that the CO2 production in China soon will pass that of the United States (or has already passed it). Typically, this is shown in graphical format like the graph below.
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This figure is meaningless. The amount of CO2 that a country emits is meaningless. The metric that should be used is CO2 production per person (per capita). This way, every single person on Earth has the right to pollute the atmosphere with X amount of CO2 (or CO2 equivalent). A person in China is treated the same as a person in the United States. Clearly by this metric either China (as a whole) has the right to produce more CO2 or the USA (as a whole) is over-producing CO2.
Let’s talk about the economy bit a little more. Suppose that the Bali talks resulted in an agreement that every person on Earth had the right to produce half that produced by the average American in 1990. (Note 1: Getting the Bush administration to agree to anything would be a miracle. Note 2: I have no idea if this would actually result in a total decrease for the entire world or not - although it wouldn’t be hard to figure out. Extra credit anyone?) In 1990, the per capita CO2 production on the USA was 18.9 metric tons of CO2. For simplicity, let’s round that to 20.
Now, the goal from the hypothetical Bali talks was a metric of half of that, or 10 metric tons of CO2 per person per year. According to some [can't find the source right now, but I think it was Glen Beck], reducing our emissions by even a modest amount will turn us into a third-world country. Instead of modest amounts, let’s see what a 50% reduction in per capita emissions would look like. Scroll down that Wikipedia article, and you’ll see that in 1990 the United Kingdom produced 10 metric tons of CO2 per capita. Interestingly, the UK emissions per capita have decreased slightly until 2004. Japan also must be a third-world country, with only 9.84 metric tons CO2 per capita in 2004.
The assertion that reducing CO2 will necessarily lead to declines in the economy are false. Many other developed countries have a must smaller CO2 production rate per capita. And surprisingly, many non-developed (or developing) countries have fairly high CO2 production.
Whatever the amount of CO2 production allowed per year, it needs to be distributed among the countries based upon the number of inhabitants. Each person in the world should be allowed equal opportunites, and thus equal rights to pollute our atmosphere.
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One Response to “1990 CO2 Emissions: A Good Target?”
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This article fails to take a few things into account. Sure, in 1990 the US produced roughly double the CO2 emissions that the UK produced, but much of that CO2 was produced in transportation of products as well as people.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the US has a land area of 9,161,923 sq km, while the UK has a land area of only 241,590 sq km - the US is almost 38 times larger than the UK! It therefore follows that people and products must travel much, much further to reach markets and workplaces in the US than they do in the UK.
It also follows that mass transportation in the US, where population density is rougly seven and a half times LESS than that of the UK (also taken from the CIA World Factbook), is a much more difficult proposition than it is in the UK. This is exacerbated by the fact that in 2005 the US population was about 19% rural while the UK’s was only about 10.3% rural (according to the UN Population Prospects 2006 Revision Population Database), because mass transportation is simply not very feasible in rural areas. The same reasoning follows for Japan, whose population density is even higher than that of the UK.
The reason many non-developed (or developing) countries have fairly high CO2 production levels is exactly because they are developing. Their means of production (factories, transportation infrastructure, power plants, etc.) are much less efficient than those of any developed country. They also have less stringent emissions laws (if they have any at all) than developed countries already have on the books.
The example of China was also cited in the article, but the author fails to consider that much of China’s rural areas are almost completely undeveloped, and most of the CO2 emissions come from its urban areas.
The idea of basing CO2 emissions on a per capita basis is far too simplistic, as is the idea of simply setting a goal of halving the 1990’s emissions levels. We should be setting goals based on more efficient means of production and transportation. We should be concentrating on developing better technology, not just “promising” to pollute less by a certain date.