Word: co2
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...March 8 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that the carbon equation isn't as straightforward as we might think. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University synthesized carbon emissions and trade patterns and found that more than one-third of CO2 emissions related to the consumption of goods and services in developed countries are actually emitted outside their national borders. Rich nations are essentially outsourcing some of their carbon emissions to developing nations through global trade - by importing goods and services from abroad - thereby shrinking their carbon footprints while inflating those...
...significant? Davis and his co-author Ken Caldeira estimate that 23% of global CO2 emissions - about 6.2 billion metric tons - are traded internationally, usually going from carbon-intensive developing nations like China to the comparatively less carbon intensive West. In a few rich nations, such as France, Sweden and Britain, more than 30% of consumption-based emissions could be traced to origins abroad; if those emissions were tallied on the other side of the balance sheet, it would add more than four tons of CO2 per person in several European nations...
...effect in the U.S. is less extreme because the country exports more than Western Europe and because the U.S. economy has a higher carbon intensity - but it made a difference. Imports accounted for 10.8% of U.S. carbon emissions, enough to add an additional 2.4 metric tons of CO2 per person. China, of course, fell into the opposite camp: 22.5% of the carbon emitted in China is actually exported to other countries, reducing its per capita carbon footprint from 3.9 tons to 3 tons. (See pictures of the world's most polluted places...
What's clear is that 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...
That in turn suggests that if we keep pouring CO2 into the atmosphere and warm the globe by several degrees, even a successful effort to bring carbon dioxide back down to today's levels may not restore the temperature. "You might," he says, "end up with a different climate...