Actually, selective import bans are quite common. During the recent US/EU banana trade war (oh how I wish I was making it up), trade between the America and Europe did not, astonishingly, cease entirely. In any case, the issue of CO2 production is highly relevant. The OP claimed that the reason the US was producing a lot of CO2 was because emissions were a by-product of it’s production of goods for the rest of the world. If the few goods which the US does export do not in fact result in the production of much CO2, then this argument will not stand up. The production of food and pharmaceutical R&D do not generate large CO2 emissions
Software and information technology entail very little CO2 production. Actually, R&D of any sort, the main activity in developing technology, has little CO2 impact. Manufacture does, but if you’re exporting technology, you tend not to export finished products as it’s cheaper to e-mail blueprints to your on-site factory than it is to transport heavy goods.
Essentially, the OP is wrong to say that the US only produces CO2 because the rest of the world pays it to do so, wrong to suggest that other countries are not taking action to reduce emissions, wrong to deduce that as the treaty has not yet been signed by all countries it is hypocritical to ask the US to agree to sign it and wrong to suggest that a trade war is the best solution to this issue.
You mean, concerned citizens should take action? Fanatastic idea. As well as addressing their own contribution to CO2 emissions (by, e.g. letting the birth rate decline, buying energy efficient products) they would also do well to lobby their government to address the problems at the point of manufacture. Hell, if they form a majority in the country, they could even persuade their government to make this an international issue and produce some sort of treaty.
Do you think it would happen? I’m not sure, but if anyone can think of a country (there’s not more than one, surely) that displays these trends, could you let us know? It might be quite interesting.
The EU exports about 25MMT, Australia 15MMT. I’d expect that Canada and the Ukraine would also have substantial trade.
Rice, staple grain of about half the world: Oryza Global Outlook Report
Global production 397 MMT
Global trade 22 MMT (say 5% of production)
US exports 4MMT (say 20% of trade, 1% of production)
Jackmanii, kimstu, amrussell and wolly have covered a lot of what you said.
There is a world of difference between “the US exports a lot of food” and “the rest of the world depends on US food imports”. As it happens, the EU is a net exporter of food and that’s after we have paid a fair proportion of our farmers a massive subsidy to produce nothing at all (known as “set aside”).
I can think of plenty of “important US technology”, if you count any US-designed or US-branded goods. But I can’t think of any examples of US-manufactured goods, the production of which generates significant amounts of CO2 emissions, on which the rest of the world depends. Neither can you, it seems.
So does the EU, the UK in particular. What’s your point?
Leaving aside the population question, most people in the rest of the world have forgone an energy-consuming lifestyle by comparison with the average American. Compare the size of American and European cars, for example. Compare the rates of public transport use in major cirties in Europe and the USA. Compare the energy-efficiency of domestic appliances.
If you’re suggesting that global warming can be tackled by individual action alone, then you’re sadly mistaken. Why? Because there will always be enough people who are prepared to sit on their arses and do nothing in the assumption that everybody else will make the necessary changes on their behalf. This is what is known as the free rider problem, and the USA’s approach to international affairs at the moment exemplifies it very neatly.
Why should I stop dropping litter in the street if everybody else won’t do likewise? The streets will still be full of litter and I will have the added burden of having to find a bin.
There’s a world out there beyond the EU. I can in particular remember devastating crop shortfalls in the former Soviet Union that required massive grain imports from the U.S. **
After sneering about how the rest of the world doesn’t need any U.S. goods and repeatedly challenging all comers to prove otherwise, you then (after getting an inconvenient itemized response) fall back on goods that don’t involve significant CO2 production. This is a) a weak dodge, (b) silly, since virtually all U.S. products are subject to “environmental protection emasures” (sic) but are responsible for some degree of CO2 emissions (I suggest your dismissal of food production reveals ignorance about just what that entails), and c) irrelevant, since major sources of U.S. emissions involve things like energy production, emissions from cars, remaining smokestack industries (all things you can’t readily boycott). Again: there are many U.S. exports important to a variety of foreign sectors, without which numerous economies and people will suffer, not to mention the effect on other nations of retaliatory U.S. boycotts. Consider our negative balance of trade, and the ease with which we can do without clothes, electronics etc. made abroad.**
Tom, it’s known as having an individual conscience. Rather than relying solely on government to legislate behavior, I suggest you investigate the concept of voluntary, concerted action by individuals. For example - union protections and civil rights legislation in this country would have taken much longer to establish had individuals not banded together in support of their causes.
So ratify and implement Kyoto II. Act, don’t just scold.**
I’m very impressed by your upsurge in wind power. In fact, the hot air is already reaching our shores, causing a surface temperature rise of 0.2 degrees F.
Exactly. And your original assertion was that the USA “literally feeds the world”. Having once provided grain to make up for a shortfall in the USSR doesn’t meet your original claim, which I think most people have now recognised as a piece of jingoistic hyperbole.
If there is a sneering tone in this thread, it is in the OP. The Ryan made a bold assertion, that the signatory countries were being hypocritical by continuing to trade with the US and that they were only doing so because of the importance of US imports to their economies. I challenged him to support that assertion, which he and you have signally failed to do. You are now suggesting that the onus is on me to prove you wrong.
The Kyoto targets are about CO2 emissions. The OP is about CO2 emissions, specifically other countries “paying the US to produce CO2”. The entire thread is about CO2 emissions. I don’t see how focusing on CO2 emissions is either weak, silly or irrelevant. If I didn’t insert a rider about CO2 emissions in every request for examples, it was because I thought it was blindingly obvious that CO2 emissions were the central issue.
You are now just restating the argument set out in the OP. Stating it again and again without any hard examples does not make it true.
This is exactly the opposite of what is being argued in the OP, but I have some sympathy with the view that a retaliatory boycott of foreign imports by the US would do far more econnomic harm to some other countries than a boycott on importing US goods.
Why? Because the US is a net importer. It consumes more than it produces. In other words, trade with the US consists of the US paying other countries to produce goods for it to more stringent emission standards than it applies to its own domestically-produced goods. So the proposition in the OP is the reverse of the truth.
Actually, the negative blance of trade suggests that you can’t, won’t or for some other reason don’t do without foreign goods, not that you can easily do without them.
I’m all for that kind of action, but I don’t think that individual actions alone are sufficient to deal with the problem. It’s all well and good having an individual conscience, but what is needed here is effective, concerted and co-ordinated action on an international scale.
It seems that you can’t or won’t back up your arguments with anything resembling a fact. The Ryan seems to have fled the thread entirely when it became apparent quite how wrong he was. I sincerely doubt that there is any more to be gained by pursuing this.
Which you are misreading as “the U.S. is solely responsible for world food production”. It is obvious that many countries, to use your phrase, “can’t or won’t” do without U.S. food products.**
I have commented here essentially to respond to the smug, snide tone from posters (well, you mainly) whose nations still haven’t committed in concrete fashion to the protocols they assault the U.S. for not adhering to, and in fact in many cases are currently jacking up CO2 emissions beyond what would be allowed by Kyoto.
And you may not be aware of this, but a major reason I and many other Americans object to global trade agreements is that they encourage unrestricted imports from nations that don’t have to follow our clean air and water standards, and in fact enjoy an unfair advantage in that regard over U.S. businesses. Sound familiar?
If you believe that there’s a realistic hope of other nations getting together a boycott of U.S. goods over the issue of CO2 emissions, you are living in a dreamland. “Globalism” and co-dependent economic markets are making that sort of activity obsolete. If there’s a remote chance of any sort of boycott having an effect, it will be through people like you, through just the sort of non-government organized activity that you disdain.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s play spot the reversal. We start with:
Which is then reinforced with
But then becomes:
Tell me, if I claimed that I fed the world, how would you interpet it? You made a silly claim, it was disproved, but now you prevaricate over your original statement that “We literally feed the world”. Either show how Wooly’s figures (1% of rice, 6% of wheat) are misleading, or admit you were very wrong.
In a word, yes. The US is quite famous for banging the protectionist drum in order to ban imports of key goods. At the moment the US is involved in two separate trade wars with Canada (read: its largest trading partner) over potatoes and softwood lumber.
The potato dispute is just about over (but I’ve heard that one before) but it started essentially because potato farmers in Idaho had a surplus of spuds. They convinced the feds to ban imports, and 6 months later they are only now starting to trickle in again.
Softwood lumber is an even better story. This issue has come up time and time again, and every time the US takes Canada to impartial trade tribunals it loses. (in essence, US lumber producers say Canada subsidizes its loggers. 3 tribunals have said no-- Canada is just more efficient.) But, since our last trade agreement expired in April, the US lumber industry is once again lobbying for massive tarriffs on Cdn exports.
Poor, poor Gary. Such typical reliance on a common, if inglorious SDMB strategy: If you can’t respond intelligently to an opponent’s argument, then 1) seize on a single statement, twist its meaning, and declare your opponent a liar, when what you really mean is "He disagrees with me! Therefore he’s a liar!!
Pitiful.
It remains true that we supply large quantities of food to many countries (i.e. “feeding the world”) and much of the world has an important stake in continuing to import U.S. food products, whether or not you care to admit it.
By the way, the OP hit on a degree of truth, though probably not in the way the author intended. There is one other product important to the economies of the EU and other nations, which is responsible for significant CO2 emissions, and which emits CO2 even after being shipped abroad.
I refer, of course, to Americans. Let’s see your governments try to place a ban on American tourists and cope with howls from the folks who depend on U.S. tourism dollars.
Never happen.
Oh, and I’ve been trying to think of the last time I purchased any EU-made products, and I can’t come up with any. There’s English muffins, but I believe the ones at the supermarket come from Ohio.
Has any other country made any solid commitment to Kyoto?
Well, I’m not sure what this argument that you imagine me putting forth is, because my argument would obviously not apply to Iraq. My argument is that other countries are being hypocritical by complaining about US production while benefiting from it. Seeing as how the US’s embargo on Iraq means that we are not benefiting from their production, this argument would not apply.
Okay then, what reason do you have for other countries importing US products? Do they feel sorry for us? Do they share a secret hatred of the metric system? Has the dockworkers’ union taken over the government? What possible reason could a country have for shipping products over thousands of miles other than that those products are important to their economy?
Kimstu
I continue to be baffled by how people can say “Irrespective of whether they end up ratifying the protocol, other countries are supporting the treaty”. That’s like saying “Hey, just because I am unwilling to make any promises as to whether or not I’ll have sex with someone else, that doesn’t mean I’m not committed to monogamy”. Supporting the treaty means actually signing it, not making post hoc statements like “Well, we sort of complied, and the US didn’t, so we’re better than them, and they’re a bunch of bastards”.
amrussell
You’re wrong to think that I said the only reason the US produces CO2 is because the rest of the world pays it to do so, wrong to say that I have suggested that other countries haven’t taken any action to reduce CO2, wrong to deny that demanding someone else do something that you yourself are not willing to do is hypocrisy, and wrong to say that I suggested that a trade war is the best solution. I brought up an embargo precisely because it was such an unlikely occurrence, and to point out that the reason it was so unlikely is because the rest of the world cares more about the US exports than about CO2 emissions. If they didn’t, then they would enact an embargo. The fact that they haven’t is proof that US exports are more important to them.
The premises of this argment are only supported by the conclusion, and the conclusion by the premises. It is a circular argument completely bereft of merit.
If you are suggesting that a restriction on imports from the US would, ipso facto be harmful to any country which trades with the US, then you are simply wrong. It might be, for example, that in the absence of the US-manufactured product, demand is diverted towards a domestically-produced alternative (other, unrelated domestically-produced goods), with concomitant benefits to the domestic economy.
If the EU imposing restrictions on the import of US bananas hurts the importer (the EU) more than the exporter (the US), then why does the US complain to the WTO? Why does it seek to get the restrictions lifted? Why does it respond with tit-for-tat restrictions on EU imports if they harm the US more than the EU?
Even if you were right, then the countries which would be worst effected by a trade war would be those which consume a large volume of imported goods, larger than the volume of goods which they export. Like …er… the USA. The rest of us could wait it out quite comfortably.
As I have pointed out, the scenario you are describing is exact opposite of the truth, namely that the countries which trade with the US are likely to suffer far more from losing access for their own goods to US markets than from losing imported goods from the USA. Of course, this makes a nonsense of your argument that the rest of the world is paying the USA to produce CO2. (And while we’re on the subject, Jackmanii seems to have missed the point in his last post that when a tourist from country A visits country B, the goods and services he purchases there are an invisible export from country B to country A, not vice versa. That and the fact that trade wars between democratic countries do not usually involve restrictions on tourists entering the country. I visited the USA myself during the recent CAP banana dispute.)
You said in the OP that other countries would be harmed by a restriction on importing US goods. I challenged you to say which countries, which goods and what harm you thought were involved. After several days, you have come up with cars, planes and ships as examples. I’ll concede that many of the planes used throughout the world are of US manufacture, though by no means all of them. But I don’t think the prospect of not being able to import US-manufactured planes is likely to be a decisive influence for most countries in determining whether or not to impose trade sanctions on the USA.
Cars are heavy things which are expensive to transport, and you would add quite a lot to the cost of a vehicle if you had to ship it across the Atlantic to sell it… As far as I know, the vast majority of cars sold in the EU are manufactured in the EU and direct imports from the USA
are a very small, specialist part of the market.
As for ships, there are regions of Europe which would benefit immensely from an immediate ban on EU companies purchasing US-manufactured ships. Unfortunately, the nature of the international shipping business means that it is pretty easy to register your ship wherever you like to avoid the stickier points of your home country’s maritime law (Liberia is a popular choice). This means that it would be next to impossible to impose an embargo on the
importation — if you can us the word of ships, many of which never actually touch land in the country of the company that owns them — of US ships.
In short, it seems that you have produced a flawed and circular argument from first principles based on a shaky grasp of the benefits of international trade and a blind (but rather touching) faith in the importance of US products to the rest of the world. I had thought that, since you started a thread on a subject which was already being discussing in another thread — the possibility of
sanctions against the US over Kyoto — you had something worthwhile to say on the subject. Evidently not.
Re tourism, you are being obtusely literal…or breaking new ground in economic theory, if you’re arguing that tourism does not benefit the nation that receives the tourist.
For a guy who’s miffed by "circular reasoning, you’re creating a dizzying effect by claiming that countries whose imports are cut off benefit, because it boosts consumption of domestic alternatives - every country that is, except the U.S. You’re not making sense.
Face it, Tom - we’re all bound up in the glories of an unfettered global economy. If a mouse burps in Hong Kong, Wall Street and London get the jitters. As to punishing the U.S. for not joining a verbal commitment to a selective global warming treaty, better forget about punitive economic measures. You’re probably stuck with generating a warm glow of moral indignation.
And bananas do not contribute significantly to CO2 emissions.
Jackmannii: *It remains an interesting question as to what posters appalled by U.S. policy are doing to bring about collective action as private citizens to lower CO2 emissions. Why is it not legitimate to postulate organized activity by individuals, to lower bloated living standards to what is needed for a simple yet rewarding existence, knowing you are benefiting everyone? *
Sure it’s legitimate. And IMHO, arguing publicly in this way in favor of government action to reduce emissions is one of the best things that concerned individuals can do. If you’re asking about what I personally am doing besides that to “lower bloated living standards”, well, although I don’t think it’s going to seem very interesting to most posters, I’m happy to tell you:
I don’t own a car, but go everywhere by foot, bike, or public transit.
I belong to several consumer/environmental groups (one of which I helped found) supporting reduced dependence on fossil fuels, and do volunteer outreach/education work for them.
I act as a “transit liaison” for groups of students in the city where I live, helping them figure out how to get around without relying on cars.
I chose to live in a high-density urban area (and in extremely high-density housing within it) partly so I wouldn’t be contributing to the environmental problems of residential sprawl.
I don’t use a home air conditioner (though since I live in a relatively cool New England seacoast city, I don’t think I’m owed a lot of credit for that) or an electric clothes dryer (well, only very rarely) or a microwave or any but the most basic, low-energy home appliances I can manage.
And so on. Now, while this sort of individual conservation effort may be “an interesting question” (and if you’re genuinely interested in it, I heartily recommend checking out a relatively new simpler-living citizens’ action group called Center for a New American Dream), I think it’s kind of off-topic. After all, this thread is supposedly about the intergovernmental and macroeconomic issues of emissions reduction policy; if you want to start another thread on grassroots conservation movements, I’d be happy to join it, but in this one I’d rather focus on the topics of the OP.
Apropos of which, The Ryan said: I continue to be baffled by how people can say “Irrespective of whether they end up ratifying the protocol, other countries are supporting the treaty”. That’s like saying “Hey, just because I am unwilling to make any promises as to whether or not I’ll have sex with someone else, that doesn’t mean I’m not committed to monogamy”.
I don’t think that’s actually a very good analogy; more to the purpose would be a statement like “Well, Bob next door cheats on his wife with a half-dozen hookers every month on business trips, besides having numerous affairs with coworkers and acquaintances, and has no intention of changing his behavior. I’ve also had some affairs, but I have a lot less extramarital sex than Bob and have passed up many chances to have more because I think I ought to be more monogamous. I’d have to say that I’m a lot more committed to monogamy than Bob is.”
*Supporting the treaty means actually signing it, not making post hoc statements like “Well, we sort of complied, and the US didn’t, so we’re better than them, and they’re a bunch of bastards”. *
Hey, if you want to declare that anything short of actually ratifying the protocol doesn’t count as “supporting” its principles, that’s up to you. But I think that’s a tad divorced from reality. I agree that using the US’s reluctance about the treaty as a mere excuse for America-bashing is not a good thing, and I also acknowledge that there’s always a good deal of political posturing involved, including the sort of making-a-virtue-of-necessity that Jackmannii commented on.
But I think that to claim that therefore other countries don’t actually deserve any more credit than we do on the emissions-reduction issue is really missing the forest for the trees. Our greenhouse-gas emissions continue to go steadily up, and our most influential politicians and most powerful business interests entirely reject the need for international or domestic standards to reduce them. Many other countries’ emissions have declined over the past several years, and they are enacting legislation to restrict emissions further and to invest substantially in cleaner technologies. Those neighbors of ours may not really be completely committed to monogamy, but they’re nowhere near as much of a whore as we are.
Let’s see, Jackmannii. You made a ridiculous statement, it was disproved, leaving you to then argue the meaning of a sentence as simple as “We literally feed the world”. You’re right, it is pitiful. Are you honestly surprised that people should call you out when you make incorrect statements in a debate? I think you’ll find unsubstantiated opinion is best used in IMHO, or indeed MPSIMS.
As for your comment that :
That’s good. And how about goods from India, Korea, Japan, Canada, Mexico, China, Brazil, Vietnam…or any other country that’s signed up to Kyoto?
I seem to repeat this in every post but you are either missing or ignoring it: the OP argues specifically that the Kyoto signatories will not impose trade sanctions on the US because of the value of US-manufactured imports to their economies. The value of exports from the signatory countries to the USA is entirely irrelevant to the argument in the OP, which that the rest of the world is paying the USA to produce CO2 emissions.
If you read my last two or three posts you will see that I have acknowledged repeatedly the fact that exports to the USA (including money spent by US tourists) are extremely valuable to many countries. It is for this reason that a trade war is unlikely, becuase the rest of the world fears the retaliatory closure of US markets to their goods.
I am not arguing that trade with the US is not important to many countries, I am arguing that you and the OP vastly over-state the importance of US imports in comparison the the value of the US consumer market to foreign exporters: it is not that they are reluctant to stop buying from you, it is that they are reluctant to stop selling to you.
Perhaps you could explain how that is supposed to be an example of circular reasoning? The US is no more or less likely to benefit from import restrictions than any other country, but it is highly unlikely to initiate a trade embargo against itself. The argument in the OP – and I’m sorry to keep reverting to the subject under discussion – is that the rest of the world will not impose sanctions on the US becuuse it cannot do without US goods. The likely effect of an embargo on the US economy is entirely irrelevant to that argument.
Besides which, we are talking about other countries imposing a ban on imports from the US as a protest against its failure to sign up to Kyoto. There is no reason for such a move to be accompanied by export restrictions, unless the US chooses to introduce its own import restrictions as a quid pro quo. But according to you and The Ryan it couldn’t possibly do that because any reduction in foreign imports would always ipso facto be harmful to the domestic economy.
And this I think is the root of the hypocrisy problem. The 178 countries behind the Kyoto Agreement are not, in fact, demanding that the US do something they are not willing to do. If they were demanding that the US sign the treaty when they had not, that would indeed be hypocrisy. In fact, they are demanding that the US a) acknowledge, as everyone else has, that CO2 emissions pose a serious environmental threat and b) constructively engage with the problem, as they have, by either signing the Kyoto Treaty as is, or negotiating to find an appropriate level of CO2 reduction.
Japan, for example, has very serious economic reservations about Kyoto, but still sat round the negotiating table and thrashed out a solution. This demonstrates both recognition of the problem and a willingness to solve it. The US postion, that CO2 emission aren’t a problem, and that the US will not discuss this any further, demonstrates neither of these attributes. The rest of the world isn’t annoyed that the US won’t sign the treaty, we’re annoyed that you won’t even talk about it.
In any case, as the final round of negotiations has just finished, accusing nations of not signing it strikes me as being rather akin [analogy]to standing at mile 10 of a marathon and shouting “Hah! You said you would run this marathon, and you haven’t. You’re no better than I am, hypocrites!” as the runners go by. [/analogy]The analogy breaks down right here because I want to point out that the non-participation of the US drastically limits the value of the treaty, and I couldn’t find a (sensible)way to squeeze that into the marathon thing. Shame. But the point is that although we haven’t got there yet we’re on the way, and America isn’t even in the race.
Now that I think about it, the charge of hypocrisy can better be levelled against the US. Implementing Kyoto will cost every signatory, but benefit everybody. The US holds that it is a special case which should not be asked to pay that cost, yet it will nevertheless benefit from the effort of others.
Could you elaborate on this point, please? By my mind, 178 countries trying to fight the 70-odd percept of CO2 emmissions not coming from the US seems to be very strong indeed. What am I missing here?
