3rd Floor Balcony

Trying to understand carbon emissions issues is like watching the leafs, you feel like no one on the team is on the side side.

My old high school friend, The Ecolibertarian had written a nice linky write-up of the recent CIBC report suggesting a carbon tariff on incoming goods from China was in order. Along with sillyaah's friend who is thinking of boycotting Chinese imports altogether, I'm having a double dose of anti-Chinese sentiment.

And while I'm no patriot of the motherland, I am a huge proponent to the reduction of poverty. And was buoyed by the view of Micheal Spence, chair of the UNDP Commission on Growth and Development, in an article in today's Star entitled, "A tactical and moral mistake".

My discussion with The Ecolibertarian can be found on his page (link above), but I repeat my opening rebuttal here:

Hmm… I was all ready to sign up for carbon tariffs.

But on these matters, I’m tossed back and forth by the waves. Today, I read this Star article: http://www.thestar.com/article/408878

He argues that carbon tariffs are not fair. I know you have argued previously that China has to be an active participant in environmental concern, and not just cry poor. But I think here it makes sense to keep your free-trading spirit about you.

There are still gross inequalities between the wealth of North America and the developing world, even the large, succeeding, carbon spewing nations of China and India. Different measures paint different pictures.

For example, the article looks at per capita emissions - a good thing. It also looks at per capita incomes and argues semantically about issues on poverty.

His position, which makes more sense to me, then Rubin’s, is to:

“Find a path forward that accommodates developing countries’ growth while meeting the challenge of moving global carbon emissions toward the safe level by mid-century.”

The next half of his article are the more complicated (as these things often are) way of approaching it. I don’t understand most of it, but I get the point: “…a global CO2 reduction program [ought to be] both efficient and fair.”

Thoughts?

It seems to me that North America, the west, needs to find a finer instrument than the hammer of trade protectionism.