Posted on 09/04/2018 9:45:30 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Over the past decade, both the United States and Europe have made major strides in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions at home. That trend is often held up as a sign of progress in the fight against climate change.
But those efforts look a lot less impressive once you take trade into account. Many wealthy countries have effectively “outsourced” a big chunk of their carbon pollution overseas, by importing more steel, cement and other goods from factories in China and other places, rather than producing it domestically.
Britain, for instance, slashed domestic emissions within its own borders by one-third between 1990 and 2015. But it has done so as energy-intensive industries have migrated abroad. If you included all the global emissions produced in the course of making things like the imported steel used in London’s skyscrapers and cars, then Britain’s total carbon footprint has actually increased slightly over that time.
“It’s a huge problem,” said Ali Hasanbeigi, a research scientist and chief executive of Global Efficiency Intelligence, an energy and environmental consulting firm. “If a country is meeting its climate goals by outsourcing emissions elsewhere, then we’re not making as much progress as we thought.”
Dr. Hasanbeigi is an author of a new report on the global carbon trade, which estimates that 25 percent of the world’s total emissions are now being outsourced in this manner. The report, written with the consulting firm KGM & Associates and ClimateWorks, calls this a “carbon loophole,” since countries rarely scrutinize the carbon footprint of the goods they import.
That may be changing. Last fall, California’s lawmakers took an early stab at confronting the issue by setting new low-carbon standards on the steel the state buys for its infrastructure projects. But dealing with imported emissions remains a thorny problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
NYC outsources it’s garbage to southern states.
Why post an article from the national paper of genocide?
The cheapest, fastest way to meet a “carbon emissions” target is to ship industry out of the country.
And that is what has been done. Now these countries have less pollution because they have less industry.
Simple. Elegant. Solution?
It's only taken the New York Times about 30 years to get in sync with reality, but besser spät als nie, as my high school German teacher used to say.
This is a revelation to The Times?
LMAO! Only the NYT could take a bundle of trade data and turn it into something completely irrelevant. I promise, there is no large company that ever considered "exporting" pollution beyond considerations of regulations that reduce costs.
Exporting pollution...pshaw! How about Extorting Profits in the name of pollution, NYT? What about that?
When a large company considers international options for manufacturing and logistics, pollution is NEVER the driving concern. If it is even considered at all, it is way down the list and most likely some component associated with the costs of being compliant with environmental regulations locally. Ultimately manufacturing options always come down to the cost of production and logistics to market.
If you were an honest environmentalist, you would want to keep these “carbon producing” jobs here where there are much stricter controls by an order of magnitude on “carbon emissions” and other pollutants for that matter. The true purpose of most greenies has nothing to do with pollution.
There is a way to get rid of the mountains of trash and garbage, it is cost-efficient, and it is also able to make New York City nearly self-reliant in electrical energy.
Plasma arc waste reduction systems already exist, and are up and running on a commercial basis in a number of locations already.
https://www.explainthatstuff.com/plasma-arc-recycling.html
This system uses a large initial input of electrical energy to get the cycle started, but once up and running, it can digest virtually anything short of radioactive waste. As it operates, it generates large quantities of syngas (hydrogen and carbon monoxide), which may be used directly to generate power through gas turbines that drive power generators, producing more power that necessary to sustain the arc, once initiated, This excess power is then available to feed back into the power grid, plus all the other materials that are fed into the system, as finely granulated material made of the waste stream, are either gasified and burned along with the syngas, or fall to the bottom of the retort as a molten slag, with all the metallic components in the trash. This slag is drained off, much like the slag from an iron foundry, and is either put to the side, as a potential building material (it has a major amount of silica as its primary non-metallic composition), or it is a relatively high-grade ore for a number of other metallic elements, as there was also much electronic equipment, old refrigerators, used hardware, and general junk like radial tires and old glass bottles. Hazardous biowaste is also consumed by using this method.
The ultimate recycling system.
Great, now China can lie about how green their cheap steel is as well as lying about how strong it is...:^)
California has been outsourcing pollution for many years. California used to lead the world in surfboard production. Due to environmental constraints they forced closure of surfboard producing companies in California, and now they’re all imported from other countries. Multiply this by hundreds of different industries where pollution was outsourced so lawmakers can pretend to be saving the planet.
hey NYT most of the pollution from you electric car’s batteries is already outsourced in China. (ask about ‘disposal issues to of the toxic waste for the same).
And the lifetime carbon footprint of that electric car exceeds that of a gasoline powered car (it true).
Who’s the moron now NYT ?
But then you (leftists) lie as easily as you breath, dont you ?
Brilliant
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