Don't Blame Chinese Babies For Growing Global Emissions
China's growing population and growing carbon emissions both made headlines this week, but we could be watching all the wrong numbers.
Taken together, these trends would seem quite a reason for alarm. A country that represents about a fifth of the world population will swell to 1.4 billion people in five years. What's more, the Chinese economy is pumping out more carbon for every member of this growing population. In fact, China's per-capita CO2 emissions surpassed France this year. Before you know it, the Chinese will be as bad as Americans.
This is indeed bad news for those concerned with climate change, but it may not be as bad as it seems. If their growth is on a sustainable path, China and India may not, in fact, wind up "completely nullifying CO2 emissions reductions in the industrial world," as the Dutch wrote in their report on the issue.
First, there's the opportunities presented by Chinese population change: In the next few years, more than half of those in China will be living in urban areas. The importance of the urban turn cannot be exaggerated. It means continued rapid development and construction, a huge demand for concrete production, and increased pressure on water supplies. If inefficiency reigns, Chinese urbanism risks going down the same disastrous path of U.S. suburban sprawl. But if this continued shift is undertaken with a focus on sustainable practices, there could be huge potential benefits in the long run. That question remains unanswered.
Second, the emphasis on per-capita emissions masks why Chinese emissions are growing. The cheap goods they export to foreign buyers who demand a low price come with a big carbon cost. Today, where to count this "outsourced pollution" is under dispute. If Chinese emissions are rising as the French number falls, but French people are buying more cheap Chinese goods, then what's the real story? Carbon metrics, such as those used in the Dutch report, surely mask the complexity of responsibility.
Third, there is a better measure of an economy's environmental efficiency: carbon intensity. Here, China is still way less efficient than much richer countries. Carbon intensity measures carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP -- basically, the more modern and "green" a country is, the less carbon it will produce to make a buck.
Just for fun, I took some data from the U.S. Department of Energy to see where China, France, and the United States stack up. You can see here that China's carbon intensity is roughly three times higher than the United States', and considerably higher than France's. You can also see that China's economy has become radically more efficient since 1980, the first days of the economic reforms set off by Deng Xiaoping.
So China clearly has room to grow its economic efficiency. But until richer countries such as France and the United States take credit for their share of emissions elsewhere, China will still be in a position to be a scapegoat for global climate change.
Photo credit: Flickr user smokingpermitted. Chart by Graham Webster.
Graham Webster
is a graduate student at Harvard and environment writer. He has worked as a journalist and consultant in Beijing and as an editor at the Center for American Progress.
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