Consumers should share responsibility for emissions

Via Environmental Capital, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke "said something amazing" in China yesterday:

“It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

The idea has some philosophical legs, as Lord Nicholas Stern and George Monbiot have discussed. That may not be enough to win over American consumers, particularly those who realize the ubiquity of affordable Chinese products in their lives. And it's not yet clear how this would be implemented, or how it would interact with the dangerous carbon tariffs embedded in the recently passed Waxman-Markey bill, on which, according to Locke, "the president has not taken a position."