It’s sort of taken for granted that things are moving east (money, cars, fashion, disaffected young men). From VoxEU, preliminary analysis suggests that this is true of pollution:

… projections of the world’s polluting centre of gravity from 1970 to 2005. Starting off the coast of Norway, its movement towards Asia is regular and accelerating (420 km in the 70s, 530km in the 80s, 460km in the 90s and 1000km from 2000 to 2005).

There’s a correlation issue with movements in income, however. From the variables analyzed, the change cannot be entirely attributed to moves in industrial production / income growth; utilizing estimates from Danny Quah for rigorous definitions of ‘Center of Gravity’ for economic activity (current draft of paper here):

- First, on average, both projections are located on similar latitude, but the polluting centre is more than 20 degrees further east than the world’s economic centre of gravity. This suggests that Asia has higher pollution content than America and Europe in terms of average CO2 emissions per PPP dollar.

- Second, over the 1990s, the polluting centre of gravity moved 1200km to the East while its economic counterpart remained along the Greenwich Meridian.

Although one should remain careful as the number of years is limited, this suggests that the pollution-intensity differential between Asia and America is getting more severe over time.

Asia (esp. SE Asia) also faces more potential downside risks from higher levels of political instability and greater susceptibility to natural disasters than were previous centers of economic gravity (Western Europe / the American rustbelt). Both of these types of problems stand to worsen if pressures from environmental degradation continue. This suggests that insurance / re-insurance / risk mitigation will be very remunerative sectors in the coming decades.