Drums are beating for war with China. Tariff swords are being sharpened in Washington and muskets primed with quotas in Brussels. The argument is over a gas, carbon dioxide, and battle will soon engage the West in a self-righteous crusade against the emerging markets of China and India.

Wallowing in the depths of recession, Europe and America can ill afford to erect trade barriers over a row about power stations expelling a useless gas. No one wants this conflict; it puts at risk economic recovery and nothing useful is at stake. Unlike previous rows with China over the aggression of its exporters, this is about nothing you might want to buy or care to own.

America fired the first shot: a climate change Bill passed in the House of Representatives includes a border tax provision that would defend US industry against goods imported from countries that fail to curb carbon emissions. Facing down Republican energy barons and rust-belt Democrats, the Waxman-Markey Bill made it through the House but not without a powerful sting in the tail from those who fear that the Bill’s main purpose, to impose a cost and penalty on carbon emissions, will place an intolerable burden on US factories and jobs.

The border tax embarrasses President Obama, who banged the drum for Waxman-Markey. The Bill would impose a cap on US emissions and create a trading regime in permits to emit carbon, similar to Europe’s scheme. In ambition, the target is weak, but for the President it is a political triumph. He hopes it will boost his standing in the fight for a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, being addressed in Copenhagen in December.

He will almost certainly fail: there will be no Copenhagen treaty. There will, no doubt, be an agreement, full of pomp and promising words, but no pact that would stem, let alone reverse, the continuing increase in carbon emissions. Nothing that will stop the relentless mining and burning of coal: the fuel that powers Asia, the fuel that made the clothes you wear and the screen you watch. As the world tumbled into recession last year, as the lights dimmed in factories and airlines skulked in hangars, the fuel consumed by the developing world for the first time exceeded that of richer countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). According to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, energy demand in China rose by more than 7 per cent last year, while in the US it fell by almost 3 per cent.

The temperature in China’s blast furnace dipped slightly but is now restored. Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, tells a simple tale that explains the dilemma: as a young executive in Beijing he employed a driver who lived in a traditional house heated by a stove. Years later the man is still employed by BP in the same job, but now lives in an air-conditioned tower block with a car, a scooter, a giant refrigerator and flat-screen TVs in every room.

Millions want to follow in his footsteps, building a carbon footprint bigger than yours or mine. We in the West are not the problem. Our carbon footprint is about to shrink. Recurring oil crises since the 1970s have made the West more efficient and, for the third year running, OECD oil consumption declined.

It is Chinese craving for oil and coal that drives global energy markets. The People’s Republic was last year the biggest emitter of carbon, leapfrogging America, and it will carry on growing. According to the International Energy Agency, 97 per cent of the projected increase in CO2 emissions between now and 2030 will come from the developing world and three quarters from China and India alone. For every extra dollar of GDP, China emits six times as much carbon as OECD countries.

If carbon is a problem, the solution has to be in Asia. Without a commitment from those countries to curb emissions, Copenhagen is a futile gesture. No surprise, however, to learn that in Beijing and Delhi, the message is loud, clear and rising in irritation. There will be no curb, says China. The priority is jobs and wealth creation. Chinese emissions will increase with no date at which growth in carbon output will end. Beijing was in high dudgeon last week over the Waxman-Markey border tariffs and, in response, India and China told us where we could put our climate change treaty. OECD countries emit 11 tonnes of CO2 per capita for China’s 4 tonnes. The Asian duo are demanding cuts in American and European emissions of 40 per cent. Meanwhile, China and India will burn their coal.

We have fought China many times over trade. In the beginning, it was the bullying Scottish taipans, their greasy clipper ships sliding into Kowloon, stuffed to the gills with opium. The Jardines shouted to Parliament about free trade and we sent gunships to defend drug dealers. It was a seedy trade, but in political terms it was a quarrel about access to markets. Followers of Victorian fashion hungered for Chinese silks and porcelain. In exchange, we fought to sell them opium.

Then it was China’s turn to push at the door; great hulking vessels, piled high with fancy frocks, TVs and toys. They dumped their loads in Los Angeles, Rotterdam and Southampton. Unable to compete, whole industries decamped from Europe and America to East Asia.

This time the trade guns are not aimed at steel billets, hideous handbags or even movie piracy. We still crave China’s goods, but in return for buying their cheap knickers, flat-screen TVs and ersatz antique sideboards, we demand that they join our new game of curbing carbon and trading emission permits. In Europe, the clamour is growing for defensive measures. France wants to compel Asian states to buy EU carbon emission permits if they fail to sign up to carbon reductions in Copenhagen; a tariff in all but name.

Without border controls, what will prevent carbon piracy? A puritan obsession with taxing this gas will only cause our remaining manufacturers to flee Europe and America. Like bootleggers, they will relocate to “pirate nations”, and in the dead of night, ships stuffed with goods laced with addictive carbon would creep into our ports. It is a trade those Scottish taipans would understand all too well.

Carl Mortished is world business editor of The Times

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