One of the main criticisms of the anti-Kyoto crowd is that it leaves untouched the growing GHG and other pollutions coming from China and India. That's the hardest one to refute I've ever heard.
What if there was a way to compel China and India to get with the programme, to clean up their emerging industrial miracles right now? I believe there is a way.
The idea comes from France's Jacques Chirac who talked about levying what he called a "carbon tax" on American exports to the European Union if the US didn't accept the Kyoto objectives. What he's really describing isn't a tax so much as a tariff, a levy used for a political purpose.
The argument for getting rid of tariffs was generally based on getting rid of state subsidies of uncompetitive industries. But we threw the baby out with the bathwater, the baby being the use of tariffs to help achieve public policy objectives.
How far do you think that India's and China's industrial revolutions will get without access to Western markets? The answer to that should be obvious.
Why not use carbon tariffs to create the necessary incentives to these countries to transform their industrial economies? Can't be done, who says?
Another argument for carbon tariffs is why should our industries be penalized with the costs of curbing their GHG emissions if their foreign competitors are exempt? The corollary is that, if our industries must bear this expense, foreign competitors are at no disadvantage if they must also bear this expense.
There are those who voluntarily get the global warming issue and there are those who don't and will require a little encouragement. Why not accept that fact and confront it?
2 comments:
I see some inequity in this but per capita tests aren't satisfactory. If we had the same population density it would be more applicable but we don't. China's 1.3-billion people put out 1/6th as much GHG per capita as Canada's 34-million. I suspect that 34-million dirty Canadians are a hell of a lot less damaging to the global environment than 1.3-billion Chinese even if they have better per capita numbers because they're just beginning their industrialization.
Yes I am willing to say that because it's necessary to say it, not because I want to say it. If we force our industries to adhere to a certain standard at a certain cost, there is no competitive disadvantage to requiring the same of them. None whatsoever. They can still knock our socks off on their labour and other cost advantages just not this one. Everybody has to clean up, them too. I completely disagree with you on the tariff idea but tell me if you can another way to compel compliance?
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