COULD developed nations be to blame for China’s greenhouse gas emissions? A study of the source of these emissions suggests so.
Economists say that one-third of China’s human-made emissions are pumped into the atmosphere while manufacturing goods for export. Climatologists have long thought this was likely, but few had tried to quantify the effect until now.
Christopher Weber of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and colleagues combined a standard model of the Chinese economy, which reflects how much money flows in and out of different sectors, with nationally produced emissions data. They calculated that in 2005 the export industry…
