Gwynne Dyer: Why the Chinese government wants a carbon tax

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      A carbon tax, though deeply unpopular with the fossil-fuel industries, is the easiest way to change the behaviour of the people and firms that burn those fuels: it just makes burning them more costly. And if the tax is then returned to the consumers of energy through lower taxes, then it has no overall depressive effect on the economy.

      The Xinhua news agency did not say how big the tax in China would be, but it pointed to a three-year-old proposal by government experts that would have levied a 10-yuan ($1.60) per ton tax on carbon in 2012 and raised it to 50-yuan ($8) a ton by 2020. That is still far below the $80-per-ton tax that would really shrink China’s greenhouse-gas emissions drastically, but at least it would establish the principle that the polluters must pay.

      It’s a principle that has little appeal to U.S. president Barack Obama, who has explicitly promised not to propose a carbon tax. He probably knows that it makes sense, but he has no intention of committing political suicide, the likely result of making such a proposal in the United States. But China is not suffering from political gridlock; if the regime wants something to happen, it can usually make it happen.

      So why is China getting out in front of the parade with its planned carbon tax? No doubt it gives China some leverage in international climate-change negotiations, letting it demand that other countries make the same commitment. But why does it care so much that those negotiations succeed? Does it know something that the rest of us don’t?


      My informant told me that his organization had been given a contract by the World Bank to figure out how much food production his country will lose when the average global temperature has risen by 2 ° C. (On current trends, that will probably happen around 25 years from now.) Similar contracts had been given to think tanks in all the other major countries, he said, but the results have never been published.

      The main impact of climate change on human welfare in the short- and medium-term will be on the food supply. The rule of thumb the experts use is that total world food production will drop by 10 percent for every degree Celsius of warming, but the percentage losses will vary widely from one country to another.

      The director told me the amount of food his own country would lose, which was bad enough—and then mentioned that China, according to the report on that country, would lose a terrifying 38 percent of its food production at plus 2 ° C. The reports were not circulated, but a summary had apparently been posted on the Chinese think tank’s website for a few hours by a rogue researcher before being taken down.

      The World Bank has never published these reports or even admitted to their existence, but it is all too plausible that the governments in question insisted that they be kept confidential. They would not have wanted these numbers to be made public. And there are good reasons to suspect that this story is true.

      Who would have commissioned these contracts? The likeliest answer is Sir Robert Watson, a British scientist who was the director of the environment department at the World Bank at the same time that he was the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

      George Bush’s administration had Watson ousted as chair of the IPCC in 2002, but he stayed at the World Bank, where he is now chief scientist and senior adviser on sustainable development. (He has also been chief scientific adviser to the British government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for the past six years.)

      He would have had both the motive and the opportunity to put those contracts out, but he would not have had the clout to get the reports published. When I asked him about it a few years ago, he neither confirmed nor denied their existence. But if the report on China actually said that the country will lose 38 percent of its food production when the average global temperature is 2 ° C higher, it would explain why the regime is so scared.



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      Mar 4, 2013 at 3:19pm

      A carbon tax is a good type of intervention.

      It's better than adding endless regulations and requirements for everything that uses energy at some point in its life.

      It does not fall prey to NYC/Toronto/London banksters sucking money out of both governments' and individuals' pockets.

      So long as it's not joined by an arbitrary slush fund that sells credits or offsets, it should go well.


      Mar 5, 2013 at 1:27am

      Here in the US we've//are experiencing all kinds of anomalous violent weather, and people're STILL in denial about the climate changing.

      But this article just shows that the Chinese do acknowledge that the Earth is warming up + they're quite willing to act upon precautions.

      The Hammer

      Mar 5, 2013 at 10:07am

      Revolutions are usually caused by food. The US understands this which is why they put so much research money into agriculture. China understands it too. When people are hungry they get brave enough to try and topple the government.


      Mar 5, 2013 at 11:13am

      There is absolutely no evidence that a 2 degree raise in temperature would result in 38% reduction of food output in China. These numbers a pulled out of somebody's behind, and are used for fear-mongering purposes.

      Also Sprach Joe Mama

      Mar 5, 2013 at 5:59pm

      Allan, the fear mongers are those who do not even bother to investigate the scientific consensus but hollar that the entire world economy would collapse if we regulated green house gases. You dismissal of the likelihood of climate change was also pulled out of an unsavoury orifice.

      Ask yourself who benefits more - the researchers investigating climate change (a grant paying them $80k per year) or an oil company (profits in the billions per year).

      Spaceman Spiff

      Mar 6, 2013 at 7:15pm

      No society is more than two meals away from revolution.


      Mar 14, 2013 at 7:10pm

      Instead of a carbon tax - why not just tell the citizens the truth about global warming?

      If enough governments make it clear that a potential disaster awaits unless real changes occur, people will change on their own.

      But keeping the truth a secret but using a tax to try and financially manipulate people into changing is silly and SO TYPICAL of governments...they treat all citizens like 6 year olds.