As the warning sign beloved of small retailers says: “You break it, you pay for it.” But many countries and businesses could be accused of ignoring this precept when it comes to taking responsibility for the carbon footprints of the goods they import.
China, the world’s biggest manufacturing economy, is the source of 27% of global CO2 emissions, according to the World Bank, yet a large proportion of these can be attributed to the country’s production of materials, machinery and consumables for export. Other Asian nations with a large manufacturing base – India in particular – are in a similar situation. This has led some observers to argue that the consumers of their exports should be held more accountable for the CO2 emitted in the process of producing and sending these abroad.