CIBC World Markets has just released a report suggesting the US and Canada may eventually impose a carbon tax on goods from China as a way of forcing to country to take part in global carbon reduction efforts. From Canadian Press via The Toronto Star:
The investment bank’s report says China, India and other developing economies have expanded so massively they have surpassed the established industrialized world in belching out carbon dioxide pollution blamed for climate change.
Many in the West assumed that since industrialized nations were primarily responsible for the historical build-up of greenhouse gases in the world, they should bear the brunt of efforts to cut back, a view that underpinned the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which exempted developing countries.
But the CIBCWM economists see a shift in sentiment.
“As the OECD countries begin to impose greater economic sacrifices on their own economies as part of decarbonization efforts, tolerance for the carbon practices of its trading partners, or more precisely the lack thereof, will diminish dramatically,” they write.
As several articles on the report note, reducing carbon admissions would not be the only motivating factor behind a carbon tax on China. The potential recovery of jobs lost to Chinese factories, a huge political plus for leaders in North America, appears to be at least as important in pushing through the idea.
