It’s YOUR fault carbon emissions are up, China says to West

It’s a natural human reaction to deny responsibility when something goes wrong, and China is no exception. It blames countries in the West for its rising carbon emissions, and claims the only way to change that trend is for consuming nations to change their habits

That sounds like a convenient solution, because it essentially allows China to act as a terminal machine would on an old centralized server network. It accepts commands but runs none of its own software and stores no data permanently. But managing demand for products, something the server would do on the old network, is only half of the equation. The process manufacturing plants go through to create those products is equally as important. But not according to China.

Now that China has overtaken the United States in carbon emissions, it’s receiving more attention from the media. Frequently it’s criticized for some of its lax regulations on acceptable pollution outputs from manufacturing plants.

Developing countries are under pressure from the Copenhagen summit to sign off on emission cuts, but China isn’t interested largely because it claims no responsibility, according to The Guardian.

Obviously countries like the United States and United Kingdom disagree, and they want to cut carbon emissions out of the production process. The real solution here is a combination of efforts from consuming nations and from the worlds largest manufacturer, China.

A difficulty even with a cooperative solution though is a lack of standardized measurements.

Ultimately, the only place to register emissions is in the country of origin - in this case, China. Otherwise, the whole global accounting system for greenhouse gases will be undermined by the complexity of double-accounting. Says Jonathon Porritt, head of the Sustainable Development Commission.

Once again, we find ourselves with a convenient excuse not to act. Standards exist everywhere we look ranging from the metric system to building codes. We just need the right decision-makers in power.

Photo by: diametrik