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…
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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 opposed to a loss in the West. But the shift is still real (perhaps less so in the US compared to countries which “decarbonised” without the benefit of massive shale gas production). Consider steel production from the Yearbooks of WorldSteel from 1998 to 2019 . Despite populations growing over that 20 year period, Australia produces 40% less steel, the UK production fell 60%, Canada fell 17%, France fell 36%, USA produces 12% less steel, and Germany 14% less.
The nations that adopted some of the highest UN carbon fashion stakes also suffered the greatest losses. China’s steel production grew 1000%.
The Australian population has grown 30% since 1998. US population has grown 20% (and unknown others?). China’s has grown about 17%.
Patterns of energy use tell the story: here’s the shift in the last ten years.
Focus on the tan colored columns in the graph below. The US has not changed, but the EU and Japan have shrunk.
The blue columns are only a projection.
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After the Legacy Media, comes the Legacy Superpower.
REFERENCES
-Michael Cembalest, JPMorgan, 2021 Energy Review
h/t Thanks to Rafe Champion at Catalaxy and Old Ozzie.
The first graph may be somewhat misleading. The developing world, especially China, has tremendously increased manufacturing for domestic use. China is building many whole cities , which take a lot of steel, cement, etc. Plus their standard of living has risen sharply as well. This is not a “shift” in manufacturing, just rapid growth, so their percentage of the total goes way up.
The second graph is improbable speculation.
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Mind you I am not saying there has not been a shift. Of course there has, but this graph does not explicitly show it because is includes increased domestic manufacturing as well.
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Be interesting to see the first graph redrawn with China removed. Is it driven overwhelmingly by China? If so it is not a developing world vs developed graph since most of the developed world does not follow that trend.
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It is indeed dominated by China, but the graph captures a meaningful shift. Perhaps people in the US have suffered less from it, and so it’s not so obvious as it is here.
Consider steel production from the Yearbooks of WorldSteel from 1998 to 2019 . Despite populations growing over that 20 year period, Australia produces 40% less steel, the UK production fell 60%, Canada fell 17%, France fell 36%, USA produces 12% less steel, and Germany 14% less.
The nations that adopted some of the highest UN carbon fashion stakes also suffered the greatest losses.
China’s steel production grew 1000%.
The Australian population has grown 30% since 1998. US population has grown 20% (and unknown others?). China’s has grown about 17%.
The manufacturing shift is much more keenly felt in Australia and the UK.
As for the second graph, focus on the shift in the tan colored columns. That’s real, not speculation.
Thanks for your comment David, I’ve updated the post, and it’s much better. Given that US energy production has not changed in the last ten years, we can see right there that there has been a very different trend in the US compared to the EU, Japan, and Australia.
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World’s Worst Polluter China: ‘Right to Emit’ Is a ‘Basic Human Right’
Chinese state media revived a quote by a Chinese Communist Party official on Sunday equating pollution with the “basic human right” of development, arguing that urging China to remedy its status as the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitter was a violation of the rights of Chinese citizens.
The Global Times, a Chinese government propaganda outlet, claimed that “netizens,” or users of Chinese social media whose opinions the government does not censor, were circulating a remark by Chinese lawmaker and scientist Ding Zhongli alleging that urging China to limit its polluting behavior was akin to denying the humanity of Chinese people.
“I want to ask: Are Chinese humans? That’s a fundamental question,” Ding once said, according to the Times. “I see the right to emit as a right to development, which is a basic human right.”
Ding’s argument, as the Times interpreted it, was that polluting the earth was a “basic human right” of Chinese people, as developed nations in the West had engaged in the use of fossil fuels and other environmentally compromising activities for over a century following the Industrial Revolution and not met with criticism.
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Fascinating, Jo! I had no idea the National differences were that great. Looks like the EU has done the worst to itself. Figures, as they are the greenest.
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I agree with you David, when summing to 100% an increase in, for example, Africa does not mean a decrease anywhere else.
The size of the pie has grown significantly
The total volume of cement production worldwide amounted to an estimated 4.1 billion tons in 2020. Back in 1995, the total global production of cement amounted to just 1.39 billion tons, which indicates the extent to which the construction industry has grown since then.
(Statistica)
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Talking of cement manufacture, the Belt and Road is playing its part in uplifting the masses.
‘China’s overseas cement industry plans date back to the year 2010/2011. According to our research, by April 2017 about 37 production lines were implemented overseas, of which seven at that time were under construction, comprising 23 Mt/a of clinker capacity and about 40 Mt/a of cement capacity.
‘Today, the overseas cement capacity influenced by Chinese producers is more than 50 Mt/a and much more is still to come. At the moment only four of the TOP cement producers are actively and steadily implementing their internationalization development strategies despite low financial returns and probably no short pay-back periods.’ (ZKG Cement)
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Graphs showing western power use are going to show a drop off in consumption on each grid as manufacturing has moved to China and India.
High tech jobs have ALSO moved. They follow manufacturing.
Western government remains mindless. Driven by the media and election cycles.
The only remaining western driver is money printing and endless mass immigration.
The great IP reset is when ALL value moves to those allowed to steal it.
Patents and universities are just a part of the free for all.
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The climate change policies are bigger drivers of the rapid rise of development in the developing world, than most people realise. This is because we kick start industry in the process off the offshoring and then the additional money injected into the offshore economy creates a flow-on effect, which has increased the rate of growth in these countries along with global emissions.
What I find extraordinary in the current climate policy announced by Biden’s administration is that it has failed to understand the effects of this western exodus of industry over the past 3 decades and is now committing to offshoring all remaining heavy industry and a huge chunk of the service economy, because China is excluded from making any cuts to their own emissions over this 10 year shut-down of the US economy. The reason China has been building vast amounts of additional coal fired power capacity is because it has been hoping to cash in on the western suicide pact, which has now been put into effect by dementia Joe. Other countries in the Asian region such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam will also be beneficiaries of the suicide pack and we can expect a large ramp up in growth in this region. Although it’s difficult to prove the exact impact, it is likely that for every 1 ton of CO2 offshored from the west, at least 2 tons are created in the developing countries as a result. This is why global emissions have doubled since the first climate conference 30 years ago and all coming from the developing world.
The question that must be asked is “why would Biden and other western leaders want to commit to de-industrialising and therefore reducing emissions to zero by 2030, when the biggest emitter in China will simply take on this lost production and emit significantly more CO2 in the process ?”. Of course there is also the question of national security. Perhaps they think China won’t invade them once they become a weak and easy target with no military capability, but in the case of Australia we have a huge pile of minerals that China would love to take control over and as soon as the west falls it will be game over down here :(.
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Any quality issues have been collapsing as well when you can’t get these same qualities of decades ago.
This is a pipeline problem that Ontario, Canada is about to face with their high compression pipeline has damage that the gas company will not address or fix.
The Canadian government is not doing anything to prepare for this shutdown on May 12 as they feel it is a political issue and failing to understand that it is a serious safety issue with the damaged pipes that have done nothing in the past 6 months to fix this issue.
Trying to prevent the pipeline from further damage was the gas company solution.
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Quality Issues with Chinese Made Crap and Chinese Lousy Design & Bulid.
Panels shatter on Chinese glass-bottom pedestrian suspension bridge, leaving tourist dangling 330 ft high
It was one of those “dare you to try it” tourist attractions that seem to be popping up in China. Now there is at least one man who must wish he had never accepted the dare to cross a glass-bottomed suspension built over a high gorge at a resort at Piyan Mountain in the Chinese city of Longjing.
The U.K. Daily Mail reports:
With its headlong rush to quickly build all the appurtenances of an advanced industrial society, certain corners seem to be cut in China on occasion. The horrific high-speed rail crash in 2011 at Wenzhou killed 43, but the first reaction of authorities was to bury the evidence.
I don’t plan any trips to China because I have written too many items critical of the regime and don’t trust its members to leave me alone if I am in their jurisdiction. But if I did go, I’d avoid any tourist attractions with the slightest hint of risk attached.
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Are you sure it’s not the work of an adversary?
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The globalists Satanic pagan religion appears to call for the deliberate destruction of our way of life, to appease thier mythical “goddess” “Gaua”…aka the earth.
Thier depopulation agenda appears to be fuelled by the same belief system…
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…”Gaia”….
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There are many reasons why developed countries shifted their manufacturing offshore in the past 25 years but the biggest has been political, from the ideas of Illuminati, new world orders, one world governments to witnessing the rise of the UN, Maurice Strong/sustainable development, 1992 Agenda 21, Australia signs Lima Declaration 1975, it all adds up to a benefit for the small minority at the expense of the majority.
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Having worked for one of the biggest multinational companies in the world the de-industrialisation of the developed world is primarily driven by cost. Cheap labour in developing countries is the biggest incentive. As robotics and automation replace cheap labour in China and other Asian countries, there will be social problems caused by unemployment of unskilled labourers.
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If robotics and automation can replace cheap Asian labour, then it follows that those industries can return to whence they came.
The reverse scenario may be coming for those unwary pyjama-clad office workers who have become addicted to working from home and are refusing to return to their daily commute to city offices as their employers realise that instead of paying people $50 per hour to work remotely, they can get someone in India to work just as remotely for a hell of a lot less. Not good for our employment figures.
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And I would suspect that the return to the U.S. of overseas businesses under the Trump changes may also have been aided by the upturn in automation which made labour content less of an issue.
Nevertheless, electricity costs for Australian businesses have been very damaging and even running an office here is very difficult.
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I don’t think so Gary. The capital cost of factories and automated facilities Is much higher in developed countries than in Asia and Africa. More reliable and cheaper fossil fuelled power in these countries is rapidly becoming an added incentive.
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The book, The Sovereign Individual, was published in the UK in the late 1990s, the economic revolution, how to survive and even to prosper in it.
In short, the end of the industrial revolution 1990s and beginning on the age of information technology, very few employees and most people self employed and if they work for a business they work as contractors and make their own provisions for benefits like holidays, sick leave and long service leave. The hated and attacked Howard Government industrial relations legislation, Work Choices, was in fact the blueprint to cover this revolution in then workplace, but opposed by the union movement including advertising that was deceptive.
Of course it is inevitable that robotics and information technology, other new technology, is changing the world. But Australia was well placed to re-position and prosper.
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Supremecy is the poblem. It is poliical not skin colour. We pay supremists to sit home whie fruit rots on trees.
I start factory job interviews with. “Do you want a job or just your form signed so we don’t waste each othres time?”
Manual work is beneath supremist’s dignity. They share a home and get paid for nothing.
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That’s the core of the problem.
Sixty years ago “unemployment” benefits were the equivalent of a few bus fares to get you to job interviews.
You lived at home and your idleness was a family matter.
For a long time now, through government vote buying, “benefits” have grown to be effectively a living wage.
You can pay your way in the family home and live off other workers.
Things have evolved so much that we now have parasites and parisites.
KK
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Ah, but the new mantra is revitalised industries powered by low cost green hydrogen. In their dreams.
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From “cheap” renewables and hydrolysis? Intermittent electricity means intermittent hydrolysis at 38% efficiency, so any energy from hydrogen must be about 3 times that from the source of electricity (assuming you can get 100% conversion back to electricity).
Given that the RET Certificates are around $35 that means a cost of hydrogen above $100 a MWh even if the price/cost of renewables is zero. And the boom side in renewables in Australia is household solar with a Feed in Tariff of 6 to 8¢ per kWh or $60 to $80 a MWh and hydrogen 3 times that.
Which politician will be brave enough to cancel all those contracts? And if they are going to cancel one set of subsidies, why not others?
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Minimum feedin tariffs in Vic are 9.8 cents 7am-3pm, 12.5 cents 3-9pm. And that’s despite midday spot prices ex generators often being around 3 cents/kWh when the sun shines, and sometimes negative if the wind is blowing.
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So a mininum cost of FIT using renewable solar to generate hydrogen and then convert it back to electricity (at 60% efficiency) – the Green dream of “storing” excess electricity – would be $490 per MWh, a bit more than coal or gas fired.
Add in the 3 cents/kWh spot price and CHEAP renewables means $760 per MWh.
And even if the spot price for wind was zero, the $35(?) RET Certificate means $177 a MWh by using hydrogen as storage, and that is before any retail charges, GST etc. LOW COST?
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Is a battery a dispatchable source of power, maybe , if it is fully charged.
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Politicians Go along to get along.
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The west spent decades buying oil from oil states that don’t like us and enriching them in the process and transferring huge amounts of money to despots.
We then repeated that when we transferred our jobs and technology to china giving them a huge step up whilst impoverishing ourselves by ending up with low paid poor quality jobs and ignoring the ways china conned us by refusing to reduce co2 emissions, not trading fairly, ignoring human rights etc.
The west have been complete mugs or rather our elite have been as the plebs could see exactly what our leaders were doing.
Mind you the public were complicit In as much they eagerly bought cheap stuff from china To the extent there is often little other choice as so much stuff now comes from there.
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It is illegal for me to cut down a tree.
It is illegal to pick an apple.
It is illegal to fish.
So, I have to wait for my government to collapse or I will be going to jail.
My cutting down a tree for warmth won’t be noticeable as many other issues become more important.
Like fuel in the cop cars…
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Or a decent supply of ammo…..
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‘ … whilst impoverishing ourselves by ending up with low paid poor quality jobs …’
The pandemic illustrated how dependent Australia has become on guest workers and immigrants prepared to do grunt jobs. Anyway there are huge shortages of labour in hospitality, nursing homes and agriculture, the latter traditionally filled by backpackers and islanders.
We export energy in the form of coal and uranium to more populous nations in need of it, as the technological revolution continues. Its fair to say Beijing has conned us all along the way on climate change and our virtuous politicians accepted their ‘per capita’ argument, energy parity and all that.
China has been the factory and the world has benefitted.
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That is one area where battery cars have it all over ICE vehicles, no $$ going to unfriendly regimes.
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Then again, if our elected representatives acted in our best interests as they are elected to do Australia would be fully utilising our oil and gas reserves including shale oil and capped oil wells that Commonwealth Oil Refineries capped during the mid-1900s because Middle Eastern oil was cheaper to process, uranium, coal processed into liquid fuel, thorium and molten salts reactors, etc.
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USA & Europe’s self-congratulation on their success in reducing CO2 emissions in pursuit of a vacuous and useless mitigation of ‘Climate Change’ has been built simply on the exportation of CO2 emitting industries to India, China and other foreign locations. Europe & the USA has yet to realise the difficulties that they are creating for themselves in the future.
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It was totally apparent, that this would happen. The insanity of this great global reset and the climate change oblivion mantra, has certainly done its job.
Now is time for a major claw back,that can only be achieved by political awareness,that sadly is lacking.
While the majority of the voting populous,are still not fully understanding the dire consequences, driving change will not be easy.
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Major blackouts are the only thing that will concentrate the punters attention on what is going on, as long as everything works, they don’t give a s###t
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Why do governments, some supposedly conservative, run to one set of “scientists” who tell them that the world is getting hot or that Ivermectin is ineffective against the Wuflu, while completely ignoring a multitude of scientists who promote the complete opposite. The latter advice leads to a much cheaper outcome as well. Is it that governments gravitate to the most expensive solution to a problem (or non problem) simply because they are spending someone else’s money or because they wish to enrich a certain few in society? Whatever the answer the result is that we the plebs get screwed. In the case of both we are diminishing our economy to the advantage of a known enemy, the CCP. China has won already yet we continue to give them even more. We are governed by idiots and we are idiots if we keep voting for them. It is time for One Nation or some similar conservative party to gain seats and hopefully influence. Watch what happens in the Upper Hunter in 11 days time.
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One Nation, now ridiculously renamed Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, has been floundering around for a while, around 2000 they had there best seat gains in Queensland but since have fallen by the wayside.
Yes Pauline speaks out, and speaks out, and speaks out, like a dog chasing its tail.
Our best hope is for the centre-right conservatives to regain control of the LNP, they have the leftists on the run now but some linger like the one often called “the miserable ghost”. His objective has been to wreck the Liberals and Nationals and using his friends on the left, Union controlled Labor and their friends The Greens to join with his LINO faction (Liberal In Name Only) to form his dream single governing alliance group to rule forever more, or at least until the new world order takes over with one world government, assisted by their CCP friends and others.
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“LINO faction”
The LNP are almost becoming the ALP with their lefty crap.
The National Party must divorce itself from the Liberal Party so we can vote for conservative policies. They can start with QLD and once they see how much support they get, go National (pun intended). Well known, proven brand that need to stick with conservative policies. (Get rid of McCormack first).
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I agree with your observations . Politicians are unduly influenced by who makes the most noise misinterpreting volume for popularity. The media which is totally beholden to leftist ideology has a knack of representing their views as the popular views ignoring the silent majority which is too intimidated to actual express contrary views in public. The silencing of the conservative view has fooled governments into thinking that what they think is a moderate middle view is actually pandering to noisy extremists. In terms of energy policy how uranium or Hele coal fired power is not front and centre for a conservative government is a serous sell out.
At a state level all governments of both sides have been totally captured by the left such that in NSW and SA where you have Liberals in power when it comes to energy they may as well be Greens even though every single federal election has steadfastly rejected more action on climate change.
I find the current electoral circumstances frustrating and a bit despairing.
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The de-industrialisation of Australia has not been driven by emissions concerns, rather globalism, or inflationism if you prefer.
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Our politicians are either clueless, incompetent, greedy or deliberately cooperating with agenda 21 to destroy western civilization
Aided and abetted by the ABC and msm
The current obsession with a non existent climate catastrophe has led to ctastrophic policies to a non existent problem including electricic power supply by unreliable intermittent Now owned and managed by the chinese
Basically I’m not sure we can turn this around
When the blackouts occur and we have closed and our coal fired power plants, Australia will be stuffed
It will be too little too late
What a dumb country
Our luck has just about run out
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The beginning of the end of manufacturing industry in Australia, with some exceptions being highly technical design and development production, was in 1975 when the Whitlam Labor Government signed the United Nations Lima Protocol/Agreement to hand over manufacturing to “developing nations”, example China.
Other attacks on manufacturers included UN Agenda 21 – Sustainability, and a wide range of government regulations and compliance costs. Agenda 21, now Agenda 30, was signed by the Keating Labor Government around 1990.
During the period late 1970s to early 1980s import duties/tariffs import protection for Australian manufacturers were removed with a couple of notable exemptions being larger unionised businesses like clothing and motor vehicles and obviously to protect the Union Movement membership base. Maybe there were other reasons crafted to cover the trail and inevitable massive loss of jobs, and the places of employment that also contributed company tax and other taxes?
The political theatre promoting a new interest in manufacturing by government and politicians is laughable, also their references to our security as a nation, like establishing new oil refineries ignoring that we once were self sufficient until “Sustainability” and “Environmental Protection” compliance made them unprofitable.
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Unfortunately the destruction of the manufacturing industry is not viewed as a problem by the alarmists it is actually seen as a feature. The global warming movement is not at all about climate but about bringing down capitalism as a political system. Manufacturing is part of a healthy capitalist economy.
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HISTORY: Industrial Revolution…Greed Capitalism/slavery…Unions…fair work practice…profits drop… send manufacturing to third world. While we are in a Capitalist-type society, the world will NEVER improve WRT comfort for ALL the world’s people. Currently, the world is ruled by GREED CAPITALISM. But cheap markets (ie: slave wages) will eventually die. THEN WHAT???
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