This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

The emissions accounting system on which they settled was an odd relic of the pre–free trade era that took absolutely no account of the revolutionary changes unfolding right under their noses regarding how (and where) the world’s goods were being manufactured. For instance, emissions from the transportation of goods across borders—all those container ships, whose traffic has increased by nearly 400 percent over the last twenty years—are not formally attributed to any nation-state and therefore no one country is responsible for reducing their polluting impact. (And there remains little momentum at the U.N. for changing that, despite the reality that shipping emissions are set to double or even triple by 2050.)33 And fatefully, countries are responsible only for the pollution they create inside their own borders—not for the pollution produced in the manufacturing of goods that are shipped to their shores; those are attributed to the countries where the goods were produced.34 This means that the emissions that went into producing, say, the television in my living room, appear nowhere on Canada’s emissions ledger, but rather are attributed entirely to China’s ledger, because that is where the set was made. And the international emissions from the container ship that carried my TV across the ocean (and then sailed back again) aren’t entered into anyone’s account book. This deeply flawed system has created a vastly distorted picture of the drivers of global emissions. It has all...