Which do you value: production or consumption? The preference has long defined economic questions ranging from tax policies to development. Now it matters in national carbon accounting too. If you look at production, you count the carbon that comes from a territory’s smokestacks, exhaust pipes and forest fires. With consumption you tot up the carbon emitted when providing the goods and services bought there. Looked at that way, international trade is a carbon-dioxide pipeline moving responsibility for its effects on the climate from place to place. Read More
