Quarter of China's carbon emissions due to exports - Reuters

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Quarter of China's carbon emissions due to exports
Fri Oct 19, 2007 5:46am EDT

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - One quarter of China's booming
emissions of climate warming gases are from its export
trade to Europe and the United States, a report said on
Friday, calling for a new way of calculating national
carbon emissions.

The report for the widely-respected government-funded
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research by Tao Wang
and Jim Watson said the current method of assessing
national emissions was unfair to rapidly developing
countries.

"A focus on emissions within national borders may miss
the point," the report said. "Whilst the nation state
is at the heart of most international negotiations and
treaties, global trade means that a country's carbon
footprint is international."

-snip-

"Without this demand, China would not have developed
so rapidly and its emissions would not have risen so
sharply," the report said, proposing that so-called
imported carbon be included in national emission
calculations.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1874784520071019