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Comment by shoo | Hacker News Reader

This analysis neglects the impact of moving heavy industry offshore -- Britain still benefits from the consumption of industrial products, historically some industrial products consumed domestically may have been manufactured in Britain where CO2 emissions from manufacturing would be counted as British emissions. Now the same products are manufactured in China, perhaps with lower environmental regulation. Both countries share a single atmosphere & so in terms of global warming it is irrelevant in which country the emissions occur. If outsourcing manufacturing without reducing emissions makes British emissions look lower by some metric then that metric is not very useful for thinking about progress in dealing with climate change.

The economist podcast [1] touched on this topic recently during an interview with Prof Dieter Helm [2] who has a series of lectures & a new book about this.

[1] For the podcast, check out the last 9 minutes of https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/09/08/tech-wreck-the...

[2] http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/

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Moving industry offshore not only simply moved emissions around, it made things worse by adding aviation and shipping.

And to make things even worse, emissions from aviation and shipping are not attributed to any specific country. Talk about creative accounting.

Moving things offshore can in some cases result in lower emissions.

For instance, it can be that the UK buying produce from warmer countries is lower emissions in total, because to grow much of it in the UK would require heated+lit greenhouses.

This may sound good, but it's only meaningful if you'd put that into a larger context. For instance, tomatoes:

"Our results show that imported tomatoes from Spain and Italy have two times lower greenhouse gas emissions than those produced in Austria in capital-intensive heated systems. On the contrary, tomatoes from Spain and Italy were found to have 3.7 to 4.7 times higher greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to less-intensive organic production systems in Austria. Therefore, greenhouse gas emissions from tomato production highly depend on the production system such as the prevalence or absence of heating." [1]

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-013-0171-8

It's the second part that it's important here. It doesn't really matter where tomatoes are grown: Italy, Spain or Austria. In absolute terms, tomatoes production still results in far more carbon emissions then less-intensive produce.

Moreover, you have to compound those emission numbers with consumption numbers. Tomatoes are a basically a staple food in the Western world. Massive amounts are produced and consumed. This is why the consumer price per unit is basically pennies at the counter.

The offset of that is, in absolute terms, a massive carbon footprint. If hundreds of thousands of tons of tomatoes are shipped by airplane or freightship across the world anually, that still translates into big emissions.

In order to reduce carbon emissions in a meaningful way, the entire life cycle of the product in your shopping bag should be weaned off fossil fuel use in an absolute terms. This isn't an easy exercise:

"The results show that the largest reduction of environmental impacts can be achieved by consuming seasonal fruits and vegetables, followed by reduction of transport by airplane. Sourcing fruits and vegetables locally is only a good strategy to reduce the carbon footprint if no greenhouse heating with fossil fuels is involved. The impact of water consumption depends on the location of agricultural production. For some crops a trade-off between the carbon footprint and the induced water stress is observed." [2]

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394405/

> In absolute terms, tomatoes production still results in far more carbon emissions then less-intensive produce.

That's not what your quoted article says though? Not that I doubt it but the quote talks about different methods for producing tomatoes, not how different produces have different grenhouse emissions during production.

These differences extend to every crop making crop specific numbers more an average than reality. Lettuce grown indoors for example has an extreme carbon footprint from the lighting which would make imported tomatoes a better option.

Sure but that is the problem of the growth method rather than the type of produce. The claim was (might have misread it) that the produce itself has a massive difference all things being equal

Also I believe this analysis neglects capital investments. Say British pension fund invests in coal plant in India.

UK's biggest pension fund begins fossil fuels divestment:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/29/national...

However: the UK government is also directly financing, through UK Export Finance (UKEF), a whole lot of fossil fuel developments, though.[0]

UKEF has ploughed more than £6 billion into fossil fuel companies in the last 10 years, which will produce 69 million tons of CO2 per year, or 1/6th of the UK's current output.[1]

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51216084

[1] https://environmentjournal.online/articles/uk-government-has...

I believe there has recently been a ban on UK government funds financing any coal mining or coal power plant projects. But yes, it's certainly a scandal that this went on for so long, and the ban has yet to be extended to other forms of fossil fuel.

It could also prove prudent to not burn heavy oil and demand cleaner fuel. Not perfect, but it would certainly be better. It would have a serious impact on the economics of logistics but maybe that wouldn't be bad too.

Don’t you have to produce the heavier stuff when you produce the lighter stuff in a column? It’s my understanding that when you separate crude you end up with proportions you don’t have a lot of control over.

Most hydrocarbons are produced via cracking the molecules into the desired length. You can modify your refinery to get the right ratios that the market demands out of a barrel of crude.

> ”And to make things even worse, emissions from aviation and shipping are not attributed to any specific country.”

Why not divide the emissions from air and shipping routes between the origin and destination countries?

Slightly more complex for shipping, perhaps, where ships may stop and load/unload cargo at multiple points along a route.

And it would be unfair to penalise countries with large ports when much of the cargo they handle is being shipped onward to other destinations.

But I’m sure these issues could be figured out.

> And it would be unfair to penalise countries with large ports when much of the cargo they handle is being shipped onward to other destinations.

This takes us back to the point of the top-level comment, but I think it's also unfair to penalize countries with large factories, when much of the manufacturing output is being shipped to other destinations.

Carbon should be attributed back to the consumers that paid for it to be emitted, not the place where it was emitted. This is what a carbon tax would achieve, as companies would pass the tax on to consumers, who ultimately drive all this manufacturing activity.

The Brits don't get a free pass just because they paid people in poorer countries to emit carbon for them.

It seems fair to attribute ambitions to the country where they are physically made, because that’s the country regulating those emissions. If you don’t, you’re incentivizing a country to have lax emissions regulations by letting their choices impact someone else’s accounting.

I disagree that would be fair, and it certainly wouldn't achieve a good result.

If emissions are attributed the country where they are physically made, then it incentivizes rich countries to offshore all their manufacturing to poor countries - which is exactly what's happened here in the case of Britain.

If the choice is between poverty and low emissions, of course developing nations are going to have lax regulations.

There's always an incentive to offshore to where costs are lower. A carbon tax like you suggested at least prevents hiding the costs of CO2 emissions across national borders. This is fair to both consumers and producers but it is not going to be costless to developing nations. Developing nations will either need to match developed ones on energy supply cleanliness or see their export oriented cost competitiveness eroded. This is a good thing for all parties in the long run but it is also a real cost.

Is there any actual form of proper CO² emissions accounting worldwide? There's something limited within the EU, but otherwise?

Mere facts would interfere with political positioning.

This is not a productive comment and does not add to the conversation. If you have information to add, please add it.

Plus, China for example, uses a lot of coal in their industry. They make almost half of the world’s steel.

Recipient markets should bear financial responsibility for pollution generated

Doesn’t that incentivize every least developed country to create dirty industry?

That's only if the dirty industry is strictly for domestic use. If they export to countries that impose carbon taxes on end users, dirtier processes will make their exports less price competitive. That encourages producers to invest in cleaner energy for energy intensive goods. It really doesn't matter whether the tax is collected at the export-producing end or the import-consuming end as long as it provides the same price signal.

> it made things worse by adding aviation and shipping...Talk about creative accounting.

I'm glad someone else recognizes it.

I'm not a massive proponent of 'local manufacturing' because there are efficiencies to be had letting others build their skills in something that you might not want to focus on. Regardless, I do think that the public's debate about this should be framed with your post (perfunctory), so that we can wrestle with all the unintended consequences and we can make those important decisions as an informed public.

P.S. This goes for any country. Not just Britain, hence I didn't mention Britain in my post. Ultimately, I'm just glad others see the shady 'facts' that deceive the public.

Will specializing in production and optimized global supply chains would have any effect of neutering the above concern(or may be net win altogether ) ?

Raw materials were already being shipped in. I imagine there was more waste from industry than there were British raw materials being used. So moving industry offshore should result in a reduction in shipping.

Provided it’s being moved to source of the raw materials. Which, I imagine, is often not the case.

You're undoubtedly correct, but the situation is extremely nuanced. I found the conclusion from this article [1] very interesting

Territorial emissions accounting might not be perfect, Mabey says, but in terms of simplicity it is the more practical approach. Lord Deben, chair of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, told the BBC the UK only has direct control over its home-grown emissions, whereas manufacturing methods and energy choices in China are outside our control.

Barrett says consumption accounting brings additional information to the table, but agrees there’s no need to abandon territorial accounting methods. Instead, he says consumption emissions highlight how hard it is to decouple emissions from economic growth.

That’s why many commentators were so surprised that carbon emissions stalled in 2014, even as the global economy expanded. For a good chance of limiting warming to below two degrees, the challenge of decoupling emissions from growth will have to be cracked.

Countries control what they can measure, which is where we are currently. However, fixing climate change requires a completely coherent and coordinated global response, which will have hugely implications for economic growth. Essentially, our economic & political models won't allow us to apply the fix we really need.

Without that, we are left with countries trying to do the best they can individually.

[1] - https://www.carbonbrief.org/are-the-uks-emissions-really-fal...

This has been going on for at least 20 yeara. Countries move heavy industry to other countries and then point fingers at them for not lowering their emissions.

The stupidity is astounding.

Another case: plastic (non) recycling.

The tighter that regulations squeeze on free-enterprise, the more free-enterprise "fights back" by doing stuff like this. It's the path of least-resistance and the most-profit so of course it'll get exploited.

Nonsense, there is no magic in whether it's free enterprise or government led.

At this stage I'm amazed that anyone still believes that national control means universally better outcomes, considering the historical record of such government led activity.

What we have here is Goodhart's law in full effect, and it'll happen irrespective of who leds it.

> This has been going on for at least 20 year[s]

Waaaaaaaay longer than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade#/media/File:Droits_...

This is all enabled by free trade and globalization. This is where all those good manufacturing jobs in Detroit/Pittsburgh went.

> This is where all those good manufacturing jobs in Detroit/Pittsburgh went.

And then when we look at some demographic information the "why" becomes a lot more clear:

- https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymich...

- https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/philadelphiacountypennsylv...

Where to point then? You have to get manufacturing countries on board with reducing emissions but its hard because the outsourcing benefits them massively economically.

What next, point fingers at where when African nations want to build their electrical networks, roads where to burn oil with automobiles? It's a difficult situation to solve, "just install solar" won't cut it.

This is a good argument for a carbon border tax.

But in general I think you are overstating the impact of CO2 emissions policy on UK deindustrialization. That process began well before any CO2 policies were in place, with labor costs and scale being far larger factors.

This has been studied and it doesn't actually change the big picture much.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

US up 6%, China down 10% for example.

But, yes, to accurately track responsibility this adjustment should be made or else unethical people will have an incentive to shift production to lax regimes.

One mildly surprising aspect is that countries that export fossil fuels show up here, even if you count the burning on the importer side. This is because the drilling and mining has carbon impacts on top of the burning.

That seems highly inaccurate.

What a terrible comment for such a positive development. It completely ignores UK's massive efforts in switching away from coal-fired plants to other alternatives, such a huge undertaking. For reference: The current population in the UK is an estimated 66 million. The population in 1890 was 10 million. Therefore the current energy infrastructure supports 6x the population at the same carbon emissions rate. That's an amazing achievement and doesn't even take into consideration how much more electricity-dependent the average 2019 UKer is compared to the 1890 UKer.

So what if China produces goods in a dirty manner? How is this the UK's problem? This is a classic case of moving the goalposts. The UK has achieved carbon emission reductions without negatively impacting the standard of living, but of course that is not sufficient for the climate activists, is it, as it is the modern standard of living that they truly have an issue with.

Perhaps the climate activitists don't realize is that most of the population doesn't want to live "one with nature", and we are extremely loath to give up the creature comforts of modern urban living. Much of climate moralizing nowadays reminds me of the Temperance League at the turn of the century.

If the standard of living in the UK depends on imports from countries that heavily emit CO2's, then in what sense has the UK achieved a modern standard of living at a low rate of CO2 emissions?

How did you turn a comment on method of accounting into a screed against "modern standard of living" and for living "one with nature"?

Let me turn that question around:

Is the UK supposed to turn away from global trade and become an isolated, self-sufficient nation just to meet its climate commitments? Do you require that of every nation on the planet?

Or should the UK impose its policies and laws on other nations? Do you prefer that model?

Carbon taxes on both domestic products and imported ones, and rebating consumers a fixed amount per person would be a good start.

Carbon taxes on imports only make sense if the emissions data from the exporting countries is readily available to make a quantified estimate. Otherwise they will be poorly quantified, resulting in over- or under- taxation.

If we don’t have detailed information about carbon emissions then just use country-level estimates to establish a general carbon tariff.

It then becomes the importing manufacturer’s responsibility to actually do something about climate change.

While yours are important questions they're somewhat outside of the scope of the topic. The submission is about a measurement of Britain's carbon footprint and the post you were replying to was talking about how that measurement may or may not be particularly helpful.

I don't think it's a particularly good argument that we should accept one method of accounting or another because we like or dislike its policy implications. What is an honest and clear method of accounting in your eyes?

Sorry, I don't think so. The fine article already answers your question and I concur with the approach, originally posted by kitd, key phrase restated here:

By consequent, I disagree with your more holistic approach of measuring carbon costs as it is based on a moral judgement, and not a quantity that we can measure in any reasonable way.

While a useful metric must be implementable, not every implementable metric is meaningful. Is the metric being discussed here meaningful? What is it useful for?

There is an alternative. Consumers (or government) in the UK could demand more ecologically produced goods to lower their emissions. Of course that would be more expensive but no involvement in policy of other nations is required for that.

To take moral responsibility for the effects of ones own consumption on the rest of the world seems just to me.

This is not to diminish the efforts the UK has undergone to transform their energy sector.

This comment. UK's CO2 _emissions_ may have fallen to 1890's levels, but CO2 _consumption_ hasn't: 89% of 1990 levels according to [1].

Let's not pat ourselves on the back and pretend the problem is solved.

1. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

Considering there is actual CO₂ consumption (oceans, plants, rocks weathering, synthetic fuel?..), using the full term from the article seems appropriate - consumption emissions.

If consumption emissions really decreased 11% from 1990 -> 2014, that's quite an achievement. Even though we need 10x that.

> Britain still benefits from the consumption of industrial products, historically some industrial products consumed domestically may have been manufactured in Britain where CO2 emissions from manufacturing would be counted as British emissions.

It is not that products from China are shippped to UK without any countervalue in opposite direction. If UK lowers its per-dollar emissions and other countries not, then UK necessarily imports more 'dirtier' products, but exports 'cleaner'.

If you account it by production, then you see UK is cleaner and other countries not, if you account it by consumption, then you see all countries are a bit cleaner (based on how they consume UK goods). Accounting by production makes more sense as governments have much more control about production in their countries.

Ignores the fact that the UK has closed all its coal fired PowerStation's

Closed is a very strong word. Some have been mothballed or are installing biomass firing capacity but they are still available at short notice.

Quite a lot of them have actually been demolished. Drax, the big one, did switch to biomass. Coal consumption on the UK grid is now zero most of the time.

Cockenzie power station near Edinburgh has pretty much completely gone and the huge Longannet plant is in the process of being demolished.

So will they in turn normalize the historical output as well if some of it was exported and consumed elsewhere and assign it to where it was consumed?

I mean if you do it one way, you have to do it the other way too.

In this link [0] posted by another user we can see that consumption based CO2 emissions is ~556.5 Mtons (2017). In total it is 940Mtons.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?countr...

Does adding them together double count CO2 emitted for goods produced and consumed in the UK?

So can we say that now that the heavy industry has been moved offshore, lowering CO2 emissions won't make as much of an impact on local British jobs?

If so the next step should be to analyze the CO2 footprint of the country and start taking steps in reducing that number instead. Eg. banning ICE vehicles would help big time I guess.

I think your point is important to understand, but I think it's kind of missing the point of measuring emissions by country. Exporting manufacturing, etc certainly does not solve the problem. But that's in part because no one country can solve the problem. Any one country that regulates carbon emissions will simply export their emitting industries to foreign countries that do not. What that means is that we have to keep playing whack a mole, until everyone is in compliance. That is, unfortunately, probably just the nature of the problem. We could try to do complex things like apply tariffs to imported goods based on their carbon footprint, but reliably measuring that is going to be next to impossible.

So I don't want to disagree with you per se, I think it's important to recognize that exporting industries is not, per se, solving climate change. But I thin it's also important to recognize that solving climate change, in the early stages, probably does look a lot like just reshuffling things by country.

What's the impact of those manufacturing emissions? Like, did they shift 10% offshore and reduce in other sectors? Or is the reduction in manufacturing the primary needle mover?

Consumption vs production figures here https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...

I've always argued this point that it would have been better if production had stayed in the west as it would have been cleaner by now than what happens in China.

There are also many products manufactured in the UK and exported to China, which are not counted as chinese CO2 emissions. And I don't mean just expensive cars like Bentley, Land Rover or Jaguar. British industry is quite huge.

E.g. all airplanes used in China were manufactured in Europe or the US, so you could say "China is outsourcing their industry to Europe and the US to keep their CO2 emissions low".

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