[sustran] Supply Chain of CO2 Emissions !!

Sarath Guttikunda sguttikunda at gmail.com
Sat Oct 29 16:07:52 JST 2011


*Where is the Carbon Coming From?
Tracking carbon emissions by source and receptor country*

Read the full article in Guardian
@
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/oct/21/data-tracks-carbon-emissions-sourceA

According to a scientific paper published this
week<http://supplychainco2.stanford.edu/>,
we might reasonably conclude that the answer – though to understand why it's
necessary to go back a couple of steps.

For the purposes of the Kyoto
treaty<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/11/kyoto-protocol>,
a nation's carbon footprint is considered to be a sum of all the greenhouse
gas released within its borders. But as many people – myself included – have
been pointing out for years, that approach ignores all the laptops,
leggings, lampshades and other goods that rich countries import from China
and elsewhere<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/25/carbon-cuts-developed-countries-cancelled>
.

If we want any chance of a fair global climate deal, the now-familiar
argument goes, we need to rethink the way we measure emissions to allocate
some of the carbon pouring out of Chinese, Indian and Mexican factories and
power plants to the countries importing good from those countries.

The new scientific paper, published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences <http://www.pnas.org/>, points out that this argument –
though persuasive – tells only half of the story. If you want to understand
how carbon footprints are affected by international trade flows, the paper
argues, you need to consider trade not only in gadgets and garments but also
in fossil fuels themselves. After all, though country X might import a
television that was made in country Y, it's quite possible that country Y in
turn imported some of the coal, oil or gas consumed by the television
factory from country Z.

--
*Dr. Sarath Guttikunda*
Founder and Analyst, UrbanEmissions.Info (New Delhi, India)
Affiliate Associate Research Professor, Desert Research Institute (Reno,
USA)
*Tel +91-9891315946  |  http://www.urbanemissions.info*
*http://www.dri.edu/sarath-guttikunda*


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