So China’s top climate change negotiator has laid down the gauntlet. He wants consuming nations to take responsibility for emissions generated by Chinese manufacturing of the goods they consume.

I don’t want to get into the nuances of an international accord on greenhouse gas emissions, but I think China has a point here. It is a global marketplace with supply chains spanning across the world. And greenhouse gas emissions certainly don’t care about national boundaries.
As major corporations begin understanding their carbon footprints, they generally consider all the emissions they are responsible for, including those related to their supply chains and customer product use, regardless of national boundaries. 

It is pretty difficult to comprehend the full impact of our actions and purchases, all the externalities, to use a term from my economics classes. Sometimes our policy makers help to hide them from us and sometimes we just plain ignore them, although it seems like we are getting better at acknowledging them. I think it would be good for all of us to understand all these externalities when we are making purchases. We might make different decisions, and even if we didn’t, at least we’d be more fully informed.