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The worst legacy of Trump will be his denying of climate change. USA is the greatest polluter of the world. Their carbon output per capita is ten times greater
by neves 9y ago
The worst legacy of Trump will be his denying of climate change. USA is the greatest polluter of the world. Their carbon output per capita is ten times greater than everybody. The country always stopped every tentative to slow climate change. Now with Trump they will accelerate it.
- rayiner 9y agoWe're not even in the top 10 once you take into account weather and GDP: http://grist.org/climate-change/some-like-it-hot-or-cold-how-weather-affects-carbon-emissions http://grist.org/climate-change/some-like-it-hot-or-cold-how....
- mac01021 9y agoWhat does it mean to take GDP into account?
- rayiner 9y agoIt measures CO2 production adjusted for total economic production and weather. I.e. it shows you which countries are the most inefficient vis-a-vis CO2 production, instead of just which countries are the richest or happen to have colder weather that requires more heating. China is a good example. It's not in the top 10 of CO2 emitters per capita, but only because it's still pretty poor. When you adjust for that, it jumps into the top 10, and the U.S. falls out of it. In other words, if you cut economic output by 1 unit in the U.S. (to lower CO2 production), and increase it by 1 unit in China, world total CO2 output will go up.
- orf 9y agoOf course, when you stop trying to massage the figures to make it seem more favourable it comes out with USA in #2, with 300 million people, and china in #1 with 1.3 billion. Your per-capita consumption is more than 4 times that of China, and for a long time you had the most emissions in the world. Your way of life isn't sustainable in more ways than just emissions. You have to accept that.
- Oletros 9y agoCO2 produced in China for western companies is acocunted in China? That distorts a lot because there is a lot of CO2 production outsourced to China
- neves 9y agoThe USA got rich polluting, China also has the right to improve the standard of living of their people. Any measure that isn't per capita is deceiving. And American companies send high polluting industries to China, so it goes to their account.
- tptacek 9y agoWhat does this change about the core observation, that shifting a unit of productivity to China from the US would increase CO2? If the goal is to minimize CO2, this seems like an important fact.
- mac01021 9y agoIndeed! China has fewer emissions per capita, and the US has fewer emissions per dollar of GDP. The obvious solution is to move all the people in the US to China, and all of China's economic activity to the US!
- orf 9y agoPer capita you are the highest, and historically as well. That's slowly changing and may not be true in the future as other nations industrialize, but you can't escape the facts. Edit: downvotes, but no comments? Nice. Care to point out why I'm wrong?
- maxxxxx 9y agoI agree. Per capita is the only fair measure when comparing countries,. Although it's scary to think about china and India catching up on that measure...