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Calling countries' total emissions "meaningless" because they're not measured per capita is ignoring the reality of the problem. Qatar—the worst per-capita offe
by ChrisGranger 8y ago
Calling countries' total emissions "meaningless" because they're not measured per capita is ignoring the reality of the problem. Qatar—the worst per-capita offender—could go carbon-neutral tomorrow and climate change would march on unaffected, because China is still responsible for the lion's share of the CO₂ emissions.
China's emissions (and India's, for that matter) are only low per capita because of how many people they have living in relative poverty. I wouldn't say this is a statistic to be proud of.
- mikeash 8y agoChina and India could go carbon-neutral tomorrow and climate change would still march on, albeit a bit more slowly. Focusing on any individual country is foolishness.
- mempko 8y agoNot sure why you are being downvoted. This is simply true. To solve this problem will require a GLOBAL effort. Notice China didn't pull out of the Paris agreement. The sad truth is every country has been failing to meet its agreements so far and some are hostile to the problem like the USA (who has a major political party denying the problem exists).
- ChrisGranger 8y agoWhile the US does have a problem with climate change denial that goes right to the top, it's making a significant effort despite this, as seen in the per-capita graph on OP's post.
- mempko 8y agoThough another point made is that USA has been exporting it's carbon emissions to China. In other words, they are an extension of US consumption since so much of what we buy here, is made there. It's entirely possible our decrease is correlated to their increase.
- ChrisGranger 8y agoIf China and India went carbon-neutral tomorrow, we wouldn't be racing against the clock to solve the problem. A gradual and organic move to green energy would be enough to avert climate change.
- mikeash 8y agoCutting one third of emissions would be enough to do that?
- village-idiot 8y agoAlso, a large amount of china’s emissions are caused by the manufacture of goods for western countries.
- ChrisGranger 8y agoTrue. This is a problem that needs to be looked at globally. We all live or die together, if we can't solve it. Nature doesn't care about the borders of nation states.
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- reitzensteinm 8y agoThe reality of the problem is that Western consumption is off the charts, and if the entire world rises to our level we're screwed. The answer for that is not to condemn China and India to remain in poverty; it's to drastically reduce our own consumption to set the standard, and only then put pressure on others to reduce. While we are emitting more per capita than China, if we tell them to cut their emissions they will - and should - tell us to piss off.
- username223 8y agoA better measure would be carbon per dollar of GDP, since what we really need to do is create more wealth with less carbon. China fares poorly, and the US is in the middle of the pack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...