The NYT had an article on projections showing that China is about to pass the U.S. as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. While the article does point out the near complete failure of the world to do anything to stem the threat posed by global warming, it is almost deliberately uninformative. For example, it notes the refusal of China and other developing countries to agree to restrictions on their greenhouse gas emissions, commenting that "China says rich countries bear responsibility for the increase in global carbon dioxide levels that has already taken place." Well, this is not just something that China says, it happens to be true. The world would have no global warming problem had it not been for greenhouse gas emissions for the last two centuries by rich countries. This is important, because there is no possibility of a solution unless greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries are curtailed. In turn, this will not happen unless rich countries pay developing countries to curtail their emissions. This information is essential; poor countries will not agree to incurr the cost of reducing emissions to prevent a problem caused by rich countries. That should be apparent to anyone with any commonsense. This means that the issue is not China, India and other developing countries. The issue is whether the rich countries are going to cough up the money to pay these countries. Anyone in the rich countries who does not support such payments (Al Gore, where are you?) is not serious about stopping global warming. Of course, no one reading this article would get any idea of the issues involved. The article gives readers the aboslutely useless information that it will cost around $20 trillion to meet the world's energy needs over the next quarter century. Where does this $20 trillion estimate come from and how is it measured? On its face, the number is big and scary, but on a purchasing power parity basis, world GDP is already over $60 trillion. Cumulative world GDP over this period will likely be over $2,000 trillion (in 2006 dollars). Is this $20 trillion estimate in addition to current rates of spending or just projecting these rates into the future? I have no idea whether this projected cost is big or small and I doubt that any other readers of this article do either.
-- Dean Baker