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Comment by bitdizzy | Hacker News Reader

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"?

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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:

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.

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.

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