Currently, President Obama is taking a tour of China in order to meet the Chinese president Hu Jintao.  One of their topmost discussion topics will, of course, be reduction of carbon emissions.  So far, President Hu has pledged to cut down on carbon intensity significantly by 2020.  This is in keeping with America’s significant drop in carbon intensity, which is currently at about one-fifth of China’s.  America in turn has planned to cut down carbon intensity by 18% by 2012, following its 10 decline from 1990 to 2000 of carbon intensity of 17%.

But all of this could just be, as the US National Environment trust calls it, “a bookkeeping trick”.  Carbon intensity in this sense is a ratio of the amount of carbon dioxide released in comparison to amount of GDP produced.  Currently the United States produces 0.52 metric tons of carbon dioxide per $1000, while China emits 2.85 metric tons.  Countries like Mongolia, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have carbon intensities close to 32 metric tons per $1000.  But the United States and China each produce about one fifth of the world’s emissions, while the aforementioned three countries produce an almost negligible amount.  In fact, over the same period of time where the United States had reduced carbon intensity, from 1990 to 2000, carbon emissions had increased by anywhere from 14% to 19%.  In promising to reduce carbon intensity, these two countries are actually promising to make industry more efficient, but make no promises on emissions reductions, perhaps in a skewed version of The Great Moore’s Law Compensator which loosely suggests that the more efficient our industry is, the more industry we will have.  Our environmental law, then, while promising in initial sound, is clearly not enough, and not adequately focused to give the results the world is expecting.