Air Pollution and Climate Change: China’s Policy Options
Author: David Chalmers
Originally Published at Peace and Conflict Monitor on: 05/05/2008
As the 2008
Olympics approach, Beijing’s horrific problems with air pollution have gained
notoriety around the world. Sadly, much of the media’s attention has focused
on what Beijing’s air pollution might mean for athlete’s ability to break world
records, rather than what it means for human health and well being. More
ominously, the related issue of China’s skyrocketing greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions has been virtually ignored. Because the suffering and deaths caused
by unabated GHG emissions will almost certainly far exceed those caused by air
pollution in Beijing, that needs to change. Human-induced climate change and
air pollution are closely related, and air pollution is certainly a problem
that needs to be addressed. Nonetheless, China’s contribution to climate
change ought to receive much more explicit attention and is clearly a much more
important issue that the oft-discussed question of how Beijing’s air pollution
might affect marathon times.
Since the
beginning of the decade, China’s GHG emissions have increased by close to 120
percent and as of 2006 China had surpassed the US as the single largest GHG
emitter (EIA, 2007). Much of the cause of this rise had to do with coal.
Already, coal-based CO2 emissions in China are more than double those in the US
and just the increase in CO2 emissions predicted to occur in China between now
and 2012 will likely exceed the entire level of coal-fired emissions in the US
(Ibid.). The influence that this could have on the rate and impacts of human-induced
climate change is alarming and has led many analysts to suggest that carbon tariffs
should become major policy instruments because they are a necessary means of
ensuring that reductions in GHG emissions made in developed countries will not
be eclipsed by the growth of GHG emissions in developing countries. The
central argument in these analyses is usually that if developed countries
impose a price on carbon, and developing countries do not, a carbon tariff is
needed as an equalizing force. Without tariffs, the reasoning goes, production
would flow to countries that do not price GHGs, thereby creating an implicit
subsidy for imported carbon content and driving up total rates of GHG
emissions.
The case
for carbon tariffs has proved to be politically persuasive and it looks
increasingly likely that most or all OECD countries will eventually coordinate
and implement carbon tariffs on imports countries that do not price GHG
emissions. Most analyses look at such a plan from a purely economic standpoint
and define its merits in terms of GDP and efficiency. The potential
implications of carbon tariffs for human security and equity have, by contrast,
received very little attention. This paper seeks to address that deficiency. To
do this, it asks whether or not carbon tariffs would or would not benefit human
security and whether they would or would not lessen current global
inequities.
The answer,
it is argued here, completely depends on the range of options against which
tariffs are measured. Relative to current policies and trajectories, which
can be thought of as business as usual (BAU), carbon tariffs looks very attractive.
But when compared to the broad range of available policy options available, a policy
that focuses simply on carbon taxes and carbon tariffs fares quite poorly.
To
illustrate this, the first section of the paper argue that carbon tariffs are
vastly preferable to BAU by describing their principal advantage over current
policies and pathways. Then, in order to show how important it is to frame the
issue of tariffs within a range of policy options, the next three sections consider
disadvantages of carbon tariffs relative to the full range of ways that BAU can
be avoided. The final section suggests the outlines of a better approach.
The paper’s
focus is global, but very relevant to China because China’s contribution to climate
change has become a major focal point of arguments for carbon tariffs. Given
their large and growing role in causing anthropogenic climate change, if China
would agree to binding emission targets, the OECD’s case for carbon tariffs
would become much weaker. China, then, is probably the one country that can
prevent the case for carbon tariffs from becoming inextricably appealing to
OECD policy makers and bring to light a glimmer of hope that something much
more revolutionary and beneficial to human security could come into being
instead. Given vast coal supplies, it is difficult to imagine China doing that,
but what an opportunity it has. In the year in which it hosting the Olympics
and seeking to remake its global image China could, if it chooses, not only help
the world avoid carbon tariffs, but much more importantly provide the world
with its first real chance to implement the revolutionary climate policies it
desperately needs.
Carbon tariffs contribute to macro-level human security
by reducing total GHG emissions
In the
context of equity and human security, the principal advantage of a carbon
tariff over BAU is that, if coupled with an OECD-wide carbon tax on internal
emissions, it would undoubtedly result in fewer total global GHG emissions than
would otherwise exist, given current policies. There is much evidence that
GHG emissions will have substantial and widespread social costs in the near- to
medium-term future and reducing GHG emissions ought to, therefore, be viewed as
broadly beneficial to human security.
There are
two main reasons that the combination of an OECD-wide internal carbon price and
an OECD-wide carbon tariff on imports (hereafter to as the tax-tariff regime) would
reduce total GHG emissions. The first is that an OECD-wide internal price on
carbon emissions in the $40-$50 per ton range suggested by many tax-tariff
advocates would undoubtedly drive energy use and innovation in directions that
would lead OECD countries’ total GHG emissions to drop significantly. The
second is that a carbon tariff on imports would lead the total quantity of GHGs
emitted by developing countries, and in particular China, to decrease because
it would drive some exporting industries to less energy intensive locations and
spur innovation in those that remained.
A reduction
in total anthropogenic GHG emissions would be beneficial to equity and human
security because GHG emissions are almost certainly highly correlated to
increases in global average temperatures (IPCC, 2007a) and increases in global
average temperatures will very likely cause socio-economic harm such as
increasing morbidity and mortality resulting from changing disease vectors,
heat waves, floods, and droughts (IPCC, 2007b). Many of the world’s poorest
and most vulnerable people will bear the brunt of climate related harm because
they are often already exposed to climatic extremes and tend to have low
adaptive capacity (IPCC, 2007b). This presents a strong case that GHG
emissions are harmful to human security because of their negative consequences
for human life, welfare, and dignity and raises important concerns in regard to
equity because the people that will be most harmed by climatic change are,
generally speaking, responsible for miniscule quantities of the emissions that
caused human-induced climatic change (Barnett, 2003; Brown, 2005).
An
important caveat to the argument set forth above is that the relationship
between temperature rise and socio-economic impacts is rarely direct and does
not function in a vacuum. It has been pointed out that key variables
determining climatic impacts such as vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and
resilience vary widely along both spatial and temporal scales because they are
determined by complex biophysical and social processes that are constantly in
flux (Adger, 2006; O’Brien and Leichenko, 2005). Taking the nature of
vulnerability and adaptive capacity into account, recent research suggests that
development pathways are at least as important a determinant of human-induced
climatic change and its impacts as is explicit climatic policy (Swart et al.,
2003). It is, therefore, possible to imagine a situation in which high-temperature
increases lead to relatively few impacts because of development pathways that
result in large increases in adaptive capacity (Ibid.) Nonetheless, most
studies suggest that even if anticipatory adaptation is undertaken, humans will
suffer harm from climatic change, that those humans who currently have low
levels of human security will suffer the most harm, and that the amount of harm
is positively correlated with the amount of temperature rise (IPCC, 2007b).
Increases in adaptive
capacity will reduce the amount of harm that will occur at any given
temperature rise and it is, therefore, conceivable that current development
pathways could change so radically that rising GHG emissions would not much
aggravate existing threats to human security. It is, however, much more likely
that rising GHG emissions would, in fact, exacerbate existing threat to human
security and that a carbon tariff which reduced GHG emissions would therefore
be beneficial to human security as analyzed at the macro level. Put another
way, relative to the consequences of BAU, the overall effect of a carbon tariff
would very likely be beneficial to the human security of most people, in most
places, most of the time.
Carbon tariffs fail to adequately consider the ethical
dimensions of climatic change
Ethics is
“the field of philosophical inquiry that examines concepts and their employment
about what is right and wrong, obligatory and non-obligatory, and when
responsibility should attach to human actions that cause harm.” (Brown et al.
2005, 7). The ethical dimensions of climatic change are crucially important to
human security and equity because they suggest that a tax-tariff regime is
ethically unjustifiable and provide a foundation upon which an international
climate change regime with markedly more positive implications for both equity
and human security than those of a tax-tariff regime could be agreed upon.
There are
three particularly crucial conclusions that arise from an analysis of the
ethical dimensions of climate change. First, no one person should be entitled
to pollute the atmosphere any more than any other person, without strong
justification (Brown et al., 2005). Second, those responsible for harm caused
by GHG emissions ought to be held responsible for harm in proportion to their
contribution to that harm (Ibid.). Third, cost to national economy is not an
ethically justifiable reason for a state to not take action to address climatic
change (Ibid.). Taken together, these represent three strong, ethically rooted
arguments against a trade-tariff regime.
Consider
pollution of the atmosphere first. A number of highly educated ethicists were
unable to articulate a good ethical reasoning for why one person should be
allowed to pollute the atmosphere more than other, and I certainly cannot
either. OECD countries’ historic emissions are vastly higher than China’s or
any other developing countries and their per-capita emissions, while variable,
are almost uniformly way above global averages. This suggests that OECD
countries have an ethical obligation to get their own houses in order before
they start thinking about tariffs.
In regard
to harm, OECD countries’ GHG emissions have clearly already caused some harm,
and will undoubtedly cause much more. An ethical analysis suggests that they
should in some manner be held responsible for that harm and that, far from
thinking about tariffs, they ought to be thinking about how they compensate
vulnerable populations for the harm they will suffer as a result of atmospheric
GHG concentrations.
Unfortunately,
from a pragmatic standpoint is seems highly unlikely that the ethical
considerations discussed above will be fully or even mostly integrated into
whatever succeeds the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, and it has been suggested that
stressing polluter pays style ethical arguments within formal negotiations may
alienate key, high emitting countries such as the US. Moreover, it is far from
clear that a climatic regime based strictly on ethical concerns would be
beneficial to human security because, depending on how it was implemented, it
could result in seriously negative consequences, primarily through economic and
livelihood vectors.
Despite such
concerns, it should be self-evident that a careful, pragmatic analysis of the
ethical dimensions of climate change could have substantial real-world benefits
for human security and equity. Most importantly, ethics can help us better
consider the human face of climatic change. All too often the very real, very
ominous, human implications of climate change get lost in big picture policy
discussions. It is, therefore, important to highlight here that even though
carbon tariffs would almost certainly have macro-level benefits relative to
BAU, the micro-level costs in a place like China could be huge. No policy will
benefit everyone, but there are clearly potential solutions to climate change
which have fewer negative implications for workers in places like China who
have contributed little to the problem yet could lose their jobs if exports
were curtailed than would a tax-tariff regime. As the country most responsible
for the problem, the US in particular needs to acknowledge the human face of climate
change and seek to support those policies which not only maximize macro-level
human security, but also minimize micro-level harm.
As a stand-alone initiative, carbon tariffs inadequately
consider the role of development pathways
A huge
disadvantage of carbon tariffs is that, as a stand-alone initiative, they largely
ignore the importance of development pathways which, as discussed earlier,
ought to be seen as just as crucial for how climatic change impacts human
security as is explicit policy. In fact, given the multi-directional links
between adaptive capacity, vulnerability, mitigation, human-induced climatic
change, development pathways, and human security, to consider policy and
development pathways as separate entities ignores the big picture and seriously
impinges upon the range of solutions we ought to be considering (IPCC, 2007c).
It would be
both myopic and counter-productive for any climate regime to ignore the
potential for synergistic benefits between efforts aimed at reducing human-induced
climatic change and efforts toward sustainable development. These can arise through
many types of projects currently ripe for development including energy
efficiency, renewable energy, urban design, and sustainable agriculture, and
present a range of co-benefits in regard to health and quality of life (Swart
et al., 2003). By way of example, the expansion of renewable energy use can
both reduce human-induced climatic change by reducing GHG emissions and
concurrently enhance sustainable development by addressing the health
consequences of fossil-fuel based energy. Many such synergies are possible,
and while true that some of these would be a natural by-product of a carbon
price signal, it simply makes no sense to not also actively acknowledge and encourage
synergies beyond those which would be achieved through a price signal alone.
As a stand-alone initiative, carbon tariffs completely
ignore the role of adaptation
It is well
recognized that vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity are essential
determinants of how changes in climate will impact people and affect their
levels of human security (Swart et al. 2003; IPCC, 2007d). It is also well
recognized that “the pace and character of development influences adaptive
capacity and that adaptive capacity influences the pace and character of
development” (IPCC, 2007d, 817). It follows, then, that the extent to which
development pathways foster and provide the means for enhanced adaptive
capacity is a crucial determinant of both equity and the severity of climatic
impacts on human security. As a stand-alone initiative, a tax-tariff regime is
completely unable to exploit this crucial link.
Addressing
global inequities at their root is the most obviously significant way in which
current climatic vulnerabilities could be addressed. But leaving aside the
many good arguments that one can make for radical systemic change, simple
changes in development funding priorities could have an important impact too.
We can imagine, for example, a tax-tariff regime that includes substantial
funds for adaptation. OECD countries might, for instance, agree to apply some
percentage of carbon tariffs collected to an adaptation fund which could be
used to pay for measures to enhance adaptive capacity in particularly
vulnerable countries and communities. Such a policy would be equity enhancing
and significantly change the analysis of a tax-tariff regime. As a stand-alone
initiative, however, a tax-tariff regime’s failure to consider the crucial role
of adaptation is clearly a serious flaw.
The path forward
A detailed discussion of a
first best, human security maximizing climatic regime is outside of this
paper’s scope, and given the complexity of climatic change and human security a
truly “first best” solution is probably unknown. That said, I do
have a few ideas of what should, ideally, happen in the next few years in order
to lay the groundwork for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that is much more
mindful of human security than its predecessor.
Firstly,
and for a whole host of ethical, pragmatic, and ultimately self-interested
reasons, the US needs to get its act together and, at a minimum, approve the Lieberman-Warner
bill or legislation similar to it. Second, the US should negotiate with other
OECD countries to design and implement something broadly akin to the EU ETS by
2010 as a way to establish much needed credibility (and much needed GHG
reductions!) before 2012. Third, a lot more needs to happen in regard to
adaptation. Ideally this will involve a well financed adaptation fund
disbursed through a quasi-independent body linked to the UNFCCC, and somewhat
similar in nature to the Global Environment Facility, but without all the
baggage. Fourth, the role of development pathways ought to be more explicitly
acknowledged and the idea of an eventual contraction and convergence toward a
steady-state economy more seriously considered. Fifth, ethics ought to be
carefully and pragmatically afforded greater consideration within formal international
negotiations. Sixth, and perhaps most essentially, China will need to assert
some leadership by agreeing to binding reductions in exchange for significant technology
transfer commitments from OECD countries.
If the six
points discussed above were realized, I believe that the 2012 post-Kyoto
negotiations could lead to something much more equitable and human security
positive than a stand-alone tax-tariff regime. I’m not sure what exactly that
something would be, but I think it would need to include a long-term
stabilization target of roughly 500-550 part per million CO2 equivalent; a
significant focus on land use, land-use change, and forestry; substantial
adaptation funds and detailed implementation plans for them; an expanded and
improved Clean Development Mechanism; binding emission targets for India and
China in exchange for significant technological commitments from the Annex-I
countries; some sort of internationally harmonized carbon price in Annex-I countries
and probably China too with implementation flexibility at the national level;
some sort of international emissions trading; and, of course, significant
emission reduction targets for Annex-I countries.
I really wish
I could say that I am optimistic that the vision I describe will be realized, but
I would be lying if I said I was. I fear that come 2015, when the climate and
climatic impacts will almost certainly be heating up, literally, a tax-tariff
regime may begin to look a lot more attractive, and a lot more ethical, than it
does now. On the other hand, miracles have happened and this issue is so
difficult and complex that I do not believe that anyone, least of all I, really
has all that clear of a sense of what the precise biophysical and social
consequences of climatic change are going to be, let alone what should occur in
regard to policy. That does not mean we ought not to try and figure it out.
Writing as a citizen of the country most responsible for the problem, I cannot
help but feel a bit hypocritical as I say that, if we value the future well
being of the planet, we should and we must.
Footnote:
Works Cited
Adger N. 2006. Vulnerability. Global Environmental Change. 16:
268-281.
Barnett J. 2003. Security and Climate Change. Global
Environmental Change. 13: 7-17.
Brown D. et al. 2005. White Paper on the Ethical Dimensions of
Climate Change. Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State
University.
EIA. 2007. International Energy Outlook 2007.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/emissions.html
IPCC. 2007a. Summary for Policy Makers. Contribution of WG 1 to
the 4th Assessment Report.
IPCC. 2007b. Summary for Policy Makers. Contribution of Working
Group Two to the 4th Assessment Report.
IPCC. 2007c. Introduction. Contribution of Working Group Three
to the 4th Assessment Report.
IPCC. 2007d. Perspectives on Climate Change and Sustainability. Contribution
of Working Group Two to the 4th
Assessment Report.
O’Brien K. & Leichenko R. 2005. Climate Change, Equity, and
Human Security. Paper presented International
Workshop on Human Security and Climate Oslo, 21-23 June 2005.
Swart R., Robinjon J. and Cohen S. 2003. Climate Change and
Sustainable Development: Expanding the Options.
Climate Policy. 3s1:s19-340.
Bio: David Chalmers is a Master’s degree candidate at the UN University for Peace.
