Carlie Wilson
HCOL 185
10/30/12
The Globalization of Pollution
Climate change is taking place within a rapidly changing world. As the world becomes
globalized, people and places become increasingly interconnected through converging economic,
political and cultural activities. The world economy is becoming unified through the reduction
of international trade barriers and intensification of worldwide social relations, which link distant
localities. The consequences of globalization play a key role in determining the future of
anthropogenic climate change.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of developing versus developed
countries on global climate change. In addition to the direct contributions of transnational
corporations to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, globalization also has the potential to
exacerbate climate change by causing more rapid deforestations and industrialization of
developing countries and consequently higher levels of fuel consumption by consumers around
the world (O’Brien et al, 2000). I will consider the impact of emissions from both developed and
developing countries, the controversy over limiting emissions in developing countries, the
unequal distribution of risk from climate change, and the projected effects of globalization on
global warming.
The leading emitters of GHGs are China, the United States, the European Union, India,
and Russia. Of the five leaders mentioned above, the only two that have been increasing their
emissions at a rapid rate over the past four years are the developing countries of China and India.
This increase is expected from growing economies as they industrialize and increase their energy
demands. In 2008, China was emitting 23% of all GHGs and India was emitting 6% (Global
Emissions, 2012). Carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 150% in China and by 75% in
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India since 2002. In contrast, the other three regions responsible for the majority of GHG
emissions (the United States, the European Union, and Russia) have all decreased their relative
contributions to global GHG emissions (Olivier et al, 2012). If the current trends continue,
China is expected to account for 40% of the world’s total emissions by 2050 (Diamond, 2005).
These statistics indicate that the economies of developing countries are consuming large
quantities of fossil fuels and are responsible for a significant portion of the GHGs that will
contribute to future anthropogenic climate change.
Developed countries have now been attempting to reduce their GHG emissions for
twenty years. The first UN-sponsored international meeting to address climate change occurred
in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 when 167 countries signed an agreement to voluntarily limit their GHG
emissions. However, none of these countries reached their emissions reduction target and the
agreement lacked specifics regarding what should be done and when. Five years later in 1997,
another meeting occurred in Kyoto when 30 western industrialized nations who were responsible
for most GHG emissions agreed to reduce their emissions back to 1990 levels by 2012. This
Kyoto Protocol had force of international law once ratified, however ratification was difficult to
obtain. In fact, the United States never ratified the agreement even though it was the leading
GHG emitter at the time. This was based on the fear that it would harm the economy and also
because India and China, as developing countries, were not subject to any emissions restrictions.
The third phase of international emissions reduction negotiations was the Copenhagen Accord,
which was signed by 188 countries at the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009. Some
progress was made, including the agreement that global warming is an urgent problem, however
overall it was largely a disappointment that more was not achieved (Rowntree et al, 2012).
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Although these international meetings are a good start toward global cooperation
regarding anthropogenic climate change, significant problems still remain, such as addressing the
impacts of developing countries. Globalization is causing once remote nations to experience
rapid economic growth so that they can compete in the global economy. This industrialization
goes hand in hand with increased energy demands and fossil fuel consumption. The controversy
lies in whether developing countries that are making significant contributions to global GHG
emissions, namely China and India, should be treated differently than developed nations when
negotiating emission reductions. They believe that it is unfair that they should be expected to
adhere to any admission reduction plan because they are different in structure, character and
history than the developed economies of the United States, Europe, Russia and Japan. These
First World countries created the problem in the first place as they were building their economies
through unrestricted GHG emissions and establishing themselves as world powers (Rowntree et
al, 2012). Developing countries believe that they are entitled to the same opportunity. Climate
change skeptics even argue that developed countries are trying to limit GHG emissions in the
developing world not to reduce global warming, but to prevent other countries from surpassing
them in economic growth.
While China has surpassed the United States in overall emissions, it is important to keep
in mind that China is home to a much larger percentage of the world’s people with a staggering
population of about 1.35 billion. “In 2010, the United States alone generated almost 18% of
world CO2 emissions, despite having a population of less than 5% of the global total.
Conversely, China contributed a comparable share of world emissions (24%) while accounting
for 20% of the world population” (CO2 Emissions, 2012). Per capita emissions show that the
United States is still three times higher than China and twelve times higher than India (Olivier et
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al, 2012). The ultimate goal for China and other developing countries is to attain first world
living standards, which requires large fossil fuel consumption. China will not tolerate being told
not to aspire to First World levels and it is hypocritical for the United States and the rest of the
First World to demand that developing countries stop striving to attain the lifestyle that
Americans continue to enjoy. However, if China were to achieve First World standards the total
global production/consumptions rate would increase by 94%; simply stated, the entire world’s
human resource and environmental impact would double. “The world cannot sustain China and
other Third World countries and current First World countries all operating at First World levels”
(Diamond, 2005). Clearly this is not a viable option for the future and with the Earth fast
approaching a critical threshold for the amount of GHG emissions it can tolerate before entering
a positive feedback loop (that will cause global warming to spiral out of control) it is clear that
all countries must change their current pattern of fossil fuel consumption whether they are
developing or developed (McKibben, 2012).
Another interesting dynamic that exists between the developed and developing world is
pollution exporting and the idea of the ‘zero-sum game’ in terms of development. The trend that
currently exists worldwide regarding the movement of energy and resources is extraction at the
periphery (developing countries), and consumption by economies in the core (first world,
developed countries). For most of the developing world apart from China and India, the main
source of carbon emissions come from deforestation rather than the burning of fossil fuels
(Rowntree et al, 2012). Forests are sinks for carbon dioxide because trees fix and store carbon in
the air through the process of photosynthesis. When these trees are cut down the area no longer
functions as a sink and the burning of wood releases the stored carbon back into the atmosphere.
As these countries develop they have been transforming forests into farmlands to increase food
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production and create more space for their growing populations. However, the main driving
force behind clear-cutting their forests is not agriculture or population growth, but rather
commercial logging to supply timber to the global market. Southeast Asia has long been the
world’s most important supplier of tropical hardwoods and the logging process has destroyed
most of the tropical forests in this region (Rowntree et al, 2012).
For example, Japan has stopped cutting down trees on their own land but that doesn’t
mean that their demand for timber has decreased. Instead, they import timber from elsewhere,
namely Southeast Asia and western North America, which is essentially just relocating the
deforestation. Additionally, as the rainforests of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines
diminish, Japan is turning its interests toward Latin American and Africa as sources of
hardwoods (Rowntree et al, 2012). Japan among other countries has also exported its pollution
by moving its dirtier factories to other countries with less strict environmental regulations.
Because these countries want to develop and secure better living standards for their people, they
allow large transnational corporations to come in with very little governmental interference.
However as soon as the local resources begin to diminish, the corporations shift their attention
elsewhere and the country is left with pollution and a degraded environment.
Furthermore the ‘zero-sum game’ in terms of global development refers to the
phenomenon that the accumulation of money and technology in core areas of the world occurs at
the expense of the natural resources, environment, and health of their peripheries. “The
wastefulness and unsustainability of industrial resource management is made possible by
displacing environmental impacts to other areas, populations, or social categories” (Hornborg,
2009). The reason why rapid deforestation and industrialization is occurring in developing
nations is to satisfy the demands of the First World. According to a recent study, 32% of global
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carbon emissions support consumption in countries other than where they were emitted. The
study also found that the average carbon emission in the world actually ends up supporting
economic growth in a country other than where the emission occurred (Bergmann, 2012). In
other words, a significant amount of emissions are occurring in developing countries like China
to allow for the current trends of consumption seen in First World countries like the United
States.
Transnational corporations are cropping up all over the developing world because of lax
environmental regulations and lack of labor protections, oversight, and adequate compensation.
This allows industries in these countries to produce cheap goods to meet the demands of core
economies. China is a prime example of this because they also have a highly productive
industrial infrastructure, which allows them to produce the cheap goods on a massive scale. In
fact, China was able to achieve conditions for sustained economic growth by opening Special
Economic Zones in which foreign investment was welcome and state interference minimal
providing cheap land and labor. This strategy proved extremely successful for China because it
attracted foreign investment to generate exports, which provided income to supply China with
capital to build its infrastructure (Rowntree et al, 2012). China is now the leading exporter in the
world, exporting $1.9 trillion of goods a year. Not surprisingly, the United States is the largest
importer of goods and we import $2.2 trillion annually (United States, 2011). In this way, the
United States is able to reap the benefits of the cheap goods produced in China while China is
forced to carry the heavy industrial burden and suffers from extreme pollution and the
accompanying health problems. It is easy for us to point fingers at China and scold them for
their reckless emissions, however the truth is that their emissions would not occur without
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developed economies willing to support their industries by buying their goods and through
transnational corporations.
Additionally, the majority of developing countries around the world currently contribute
negligible GHG emissions, and yet they are expected to suffer most from climate change. The
risks of climate change are not evenly distributed, and it is predicted that the most vulnerable
areas, (i.e. Africa, small island nations) will experience hardships such as flooding from rising
sea levels, an increase in severe weather and a decrease in food security and water availability
due to changing rainfall and agriculture dynamics. Many developing countries that are not
contributing to or benefiting from GHG emissions will be forced to confront the negative
consequences climate change. For example, much of Africa has been excluded from
globalization thus far, and yet two-thirds of the continent is comprised of dry lands, which are
highly vulnerable to climate change. Water shortage and drought would be exacerbated by the
expected increase in temperatures and decrease in precipitation and widespread poverty makes
the region even more susceptible because of limited adaptation abilities (O’Brien et al, 2000).
Another example of uneven risk distribution is in South and Southeast Asia. In South
Asia, the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta in Bangladesh is in danger of inundation from even a minor
rise in sea level. A 2007 report from the Indian government suggests that up to 7 million people
could be displaced by the end of the century due to a predicted one-meter rise in sea level.
Agriculture is South Asia is also expected to suffer due to the rapidly retreating Himalayan
glaciers, threatening the dry season water supplies to the Indus-Ganges Plain (Rowntree, 2012).
The consequences for Southeast Asia are even more severe. Most of the population density in
this region is concentrated in coastal and delta environments that are particularly vulnerable to
rises in sea levels. “A 2009 study by the Asia Development Bank found that Indonesia,
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Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines could suffer climate-change damages of more than twice
the global average by the end of the century” and sea level rise could put as many as 2,000
islands underwater in Indonesia alone by the mid 2000s (Rowntree et al, 2012). Obviously
climate change will also have negative consequences for the First World, however the Third
World is expected to suffer much more because their socioeconomic conditions are generally
much poorer causing them to be more vulnerable and less resilient (O’Brien et al, 2000).
Despite these grim statistics, there is still reason for hope. Although China’s emission
rate continues to increase, the growth has been slowed to almost half the economic growth rate
over the past two decades through economic reform, energy efficiency improvements, switching
from coal to natural gas, renewable energy development, afforestation and slowing population
growth. “In India, key factors in GHG emission reductions have been economic restructuring,
local environmental protection, and technological change, mediated through economic reform,
enforcement of clean air laws by the nation’s highest court, renewable energy incentives and
development programs funded by the national government and foreign donors”
(Climate Change, 2007). Developing countries do not have to follow the same fossil fuel
consumption path taken by developed countries. Policies and technology advancing energy
efficiency and renewable energy use can allow developing countries, which need to increase
their energy consumption in order to fuel their social and economic development, do so in a
cleaner and more sustainable manner. In effect this can have a significant impact on energy
trends, social progress and environmental quality in developing countries (Climate Change,
2007).
Developed and developing countries are both contributing to climate change and the
phenomenon of globalization is rapidly increasing industrialization and deforestation worldwide,
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which will lead to even more pollution if preventative actions are not taken very soon. The
effects of climate change are unevenly distributed and countries contributing the most will not
necessarily be the ones first suffering the consequences. Anthropogenic pollution is undoubtedly
a very serious problem and the magnitude and severity of anthropogenic climate change will
depend on the emission reduction actions taken in the near future by both developed and
developing countries to respond to this problem.
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