The United States will be banned from selling goods to many countries if it continues to shirk its promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Lord Stern, the world’s leading climate change economist, said nations that were taking strong action on emissions could start imposing restrictions on “dirty” US exports by 2020.
Lord Stern, who advises several G20 leaders and is one of the key players in the international negotiations seeking a deal on emissions, made his comments 10 days before the annual United Nations climate change conference opens in Cancun, Mexico. They reflect the feeling in many countries that a lack of action on emissions in the US is delaying progress in the talks.
“The US will increasingly see the risks of being left behind, and 10 years from now they would have to start worrying about being shut out of markets because their production is dirty,” Lord Stern said. “If they persist in being slow about reducing emissions, US exports will start to look more carbon intensive. [Countries] will start measuring the carbon content of exports.”
President Obama pledged before the Copenhagen climate conference last December to cut US emissions by 17 per cent on 2005 levels by 2020. But his efforts to introduce legislation on emissions have been blocked by Congress. Republican gains in the midterm elections mean that there is little chance of legislation being passed in the next two years.
The US emits more than twice as much CO2 per capita as the EU and almost three times as much as China.
Lord Stern said that Europe and the Far East were forging ahead of the US in controlling emissions and switching to low carbon sources of energy. They would not tolerate having their industries undermined by American competitors that had not paid for their emissions.
“If you are charging properly for carbon and other people are not, you will take that into account,” he said. “Many of the more forward-looking people in the US are thinking about this. If they see a danger on the trade front to US exports that could influence public discussion.”
Asked what type of US products could face restrictions, Lord Stern said: “Aircraft, clearly, some cars, machine tools - it’s not simply what’s in the capital good, it’s what kind of processes the capital good is facilitating.”
Lord Stern said that a complete ban on some goods was also possible. He said the American people should overcome their historical antipathy to taxation and accept that emissions needed to be controlled either through a tax or a trading scheme.
“It goes back to the War of Independence. It’s a country that is very sensitive to big government and taxation for understandable historical reasons,” he said, adding that it was a “conceptual mistake” to see charging for emissions as a tax. “This is about stopping subsidising by stopping people being allowed to pollute for free.”
Lord Stern said that China was taking far greater action on climate change than the US and was winning the race to develop clean technology to sell to the rest of the world. “The Chinese have declared very strongly for change. They are already talking about a tax on coal and natural resources. They have been quite drastic in closing a number of the dirtier factories.”
He said that China was also considering a cap on overall energy use by 2015. “The Chinese are very serious about this because they know just how vulnerable China is, with big populations on the coastline. They also know that the green race for the new industrial revolution is on and they see that as a big source of growth.”
He said other countries were no longer willing to allow the US to block progress. “The big blocs, the EU, Brazil, China, India, are asking now,’What should we be doing in a world where we can’t be sure that the US will be a leader in the near future? Do we all wait, or do we get on with this new industrial revolution?’”
Todd Stern, the US lead negotiator on climate change, said earlier this year that it was in America’s own economic interest to impose emissions controls. Speaking to the Centre for American Progress, he said: “This is something we must do for our own good, to contain the gathering storm that threatens to ravage our natural world.”
