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China Confronts Europe Over Climate-Based Trade Restrictions
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
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It's a good article. Considering that China is still considered a developing country, it makes sense that it would still not yet be included in that list of rich countries.
I was thinking that perhaps a trade could be be concluded here. Places like China gets credits in recognition of having to bear that accelerated burden, which it can exchange in place of climate-changed related tariffs. So, China would - for a limited time - continue to get tariff free access to the EU, but would have to deliver on climate change in order to avoid tariffs completely.
China is richer then the global average and at this point about average in terms of per capita cummulative emissions. It does not need special protection anymore.
The point was not about need but fairness. By total GDP alone, China could certainly fit whatever criteria to be included in the list of rich countries - but it seems that it's understood that this isn't particularly fair.
Likewise, the rich countries on the list have had over a century since their respective industrial revolutions to take advantage of it and use it to accumulate the wealth needed to go green. China, however, would have to change much faster than the rest. This is the unfairness being addressed (as opposed to need), and the credits were just one idea to address that.
A lot of high income countries did not have their industrial revolution less then a century ago. That was a bit post WW1, so it was mainly Western Europe besides the Iberian peninsula, US, Canada and Australia, which were industrialized a century ago. Japan did really start to grow in 1960, as did Spain and Italy. South Korea went up in the 1980s. Many already have had peak per capita emissions some time ago. Then you have problems like South Africa and Russia, which both have high emissions, but are not that rich. Russias per capita emissions are above those of the EU since 1951 for example. Time is also a problem, as in countries have falling emissions and others have increased, so that needs to be included. Also technology changed. Things like solar, wind turbines, electric cars, even electric trains, nuclear power plants and so forth are well developed technologies today. That was not the case a century ago. Besides that global climate change and knowledge of human impacts of it, are relativly recent, it only started being a somewhat discussed political point in the 70s.
Point is, that it is complex and there honestly should be a formular to determine each countries contribution and that should include new emissions. Depending on how it is calculated that can absolutly include China.
I think we're agreed here. With China being the largest emitter of current (as opposed to cumulative) emissions, a formula - which would indeed likely be quite complex - is needed here that can fairly take that into account along with the other points (like the accelerated timeframe required as compared to the rich countries).
The article makes a good point - which I think you allude to - about the definition of rich countries perhaps needing to be updated as part of this (for example, you include South Korea, who isn't on that list, though weirdly, Japan is, despite having a post WW-II date of the 1960s). Probably should be "advanced economies" instead of "rich countries" - so China would be rich via total GDP measures but perhaps not an advanced economy yet due to the low average per capital GDP or low average individual citizen's income, for example, while the US would be advanced and rich while (for example) North Korea wouldn't be either.