UPDATED: See below

The Western World has mostly succeeded in reducing emissions by shifting their emissions to factories in developing nations. In industries like Steel, Cement and Plastic as much as 20 – 50% of all production has gone overseas.

All this was achieved in just 20 years or so…

…

In the game of emissions reductions the West will become irrelevant (and in so many other ways too):

…The even more important and larger question: even if the US succeeds, what about everyone else? Over the last 25 years, the developed world shifted much of its carbon-intensive manufacturing of steel, cement, ammonia and plastics to the developing world. As a result, developing world adoption of wind, solar, storage and nuclear power may end up being the primary determinant of future global emissions outcomes. That has certainly been the case over the last decade: Europe and Japan reduced primary energy use by 4%-6% but developing world increases were 6x higher than their reductions

–Michael Cembalist, JP Morgan Annual Energy Paper

 

UPDATE: David Wojick makes the good point that some of shift is due to an increase in China for China’s own use, as […]