A coal-fired power
station in rural Zhejiang Province, China. Steven J. Davis (2015)
UCI, other researchers link products made there with higher
CO2 emissions
(September 28, 2015) In
a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from
three universities show that products made in China are associated with
significantly higher carbon dioxide emissions than the same products made
elsewhere.
“The amazing increase in Chinese manufacturing over the past
15 years has driven the world economy to new heights and supplied consumers in
developed countries with tremendous quantities of lower-cost goods,” said
co-author Steven J. Davis, an assistant professor of Earth system science at
the University of California, Irvine. “But all of this has come at substantial
cost to the environment.”
The researchers, also from Harvard University and the
University of Maryland, attribute China’s high emissions intensity – the
quantity of CO2 emitted per dollar of goods produced – to the nation’s
antiquated manufacturing processes and reliance on coal.
“The CO2 emissions related to China’s exports are large not
just because they export a lot of stuff or because they specialize in
energy-demanding industries, but because their manufacturing technologies are
less advanced and they rely primarily on coal for energy,” said co-author Klaus
Hubacek, a University of Maryland professor of geographical sciences.
In an earlier study, UCI’s Davis showed that developed
countries were outsourcing both jobs and the problem of industrial pollution by
having products manufactured in low-wage economies like China’s. This new work
goes a step further to demonstrate that consumption of Chinese-made goods by
consumers in advanced economies is potentially accelerating global climate
change, a problem without national borders.