September 24, 2014
This point would have been worth including in a discussion of President Obama’s effort to get China to agree to emission reductions. China remains much poorer than the United States, even though it has surpassed the United States in GDP, because it has four times the population.
Furthermore, many of its emissions are associated with goods that are produced for export to the United States and other countries. In that sense, the United States has effectively exported emissions connected to its own consumption to China. Also, the problem of global warming is associated with the accumulation of carbon dioxide over time. The United States and other wealthy countries have been contributing to this buildup on a large scale for more than a century. If they had not put so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, global warming would not be a problem today. China has far to go before it catches up to the United States in total carbon dioxide emissions over time.
Comments