CO2 Trade Deficit
Dec. 14th, 2004 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_tectonicInteresting economics fact from today's Coffee Talk:
The U.S. trade deficit has gone from about -150 G$ in 1998 to about -525 G$ today, which is, like, a LOT...
...unless you include the environmental costs of the trade, in which case the U.S. basically is able to avoid the implicit costs of CO2 emissions by exporting a significant chunk of them to China. That decreases the value of the U.S.-China trade deficit, and depending on how you price the CO2 emissions, can even wipe it out completely.
(And lest you think I know something about economics, the only reason this makes any sense to me is because the talk just finished, and it's still fresh in my brain.)
The U.S. trade deficit has gone from about -150 G$ in 1998 to about -525 G$ today, which is, like, a LOT...
...unless you include the environmental costs of the trade, in which case the U.S. basically is able to avoid the implicit costs of CO2 emissions by exporting a significant chunk of them to China. That decreases the value of the U.S.-China trade deficit, and depending on how you price the CO2 emissions, can even wipe it out completely.
(And lest you think I know something about economics, the only reason this makes any sense to me is because the talk just finished, and it's still fresh in my brain.)
Re: Traveling Gasses
Date: 2004-12-14 10:58 am (UTC)The Chinese bear the brunt of low air quality from smog (they use a lot more coal than we do in the U.S.), but everyone in the world gets hit by the greenhouse gases. (Arguably high-latitude folks are getting hit more and sooner, but that's another subject.)