Chinese puzzles (COP 14)

01 Dec 2008 – Geoff Lye

The conference is run as the formal UNFCCC negotiating process with a series of ‘side events’; for those in observer roles like me, these are invariably more interesting (and, as I reported from Bali) more inspiring too. Today I chose an event organized by the Institute of Development Studies which focused on China. While full of insight and data demonstrating the moral imperative that developed countries should do massively more in delivering GHG reductions, the fact which stuck in my mind was that the Emma Maersk ship delivered 45,000 tonnes of goods to the UK in time for Christmas 2007 and sailed away with thousands of tonnes of our waste – destined for China.

The research from Tyndall and the Sussex Energy Group suggests that 23% of China’s GHG emissions are fully attributable to the goods they produce for export to developed economies. I believe it is becoming increasingly clear that our historic attribution of emissions to producers rather than to consumers is rationally and morally flawed. As David Satterthwaite of IIED puts it: ‘Consumer demand drives the production of goods and services, and therefore the emission of greenhouse gases’. The consequence, of course, is that the argument that China is the world’s biggest emitter – ahead of the US – is heavily undermined on this basis. It will be interesting to see how the US delegation handle that challenge; but the appetite for bringing new issues, however compelling, to the table here in Poznan is very low.

I mentioned to a colleague in a call to the UK the key points from the China presentations and she immediately emailed me an amazing chart from Capital Link showing the collapse in sea trade between August and November of this year. If I read it correctly, shipping freight demand has fallen off a cliff – an ominous indicator for all economies, but especially so for the Chinese.