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Both US population and absolute US greenhouse gas emissions have been growing over time. Population has simply grown proportionally faster than emissions. So ye
by EForEndeavour 7y ago
Both US population and absolute US greenhouse gas emissions have been growing over time. Population has simply grown proportionally faster than emissions. So yes, US emissions per capita have decreased over time, but total US emissions have been rising, and that's what affects climate.
- bendbro 7y agoThanks only to immigration. US birth rate is well below replacement.
- earenndil 7y agoDidn't used to be, though.
- gedy 7y agoI agree "per capita" can be misleading, but China and India are growing faster than the US, and China is outputting more CO2 than the US.
- amanaplanacanal 7y agoChina has a lot more people than the US, and they do a lot of the US's manufacturing too. Many people think that the US should not try to cut carbon emissions because China swamps us in this. I strongly disagree with that.
- gedy 7y agoThe thing is: we are cutting emissions, but it probably won’t save the planet, if China and India keep growing. The “fairness“ of per capita usage is a separate issue from climate change
- ls612 7y agoUS emissions have declined about 15% in absolute terms since the early 2000s. That’s a billion tons less per year. Unfortunately China added about 10 billion tons a year in the same period so it didn’t help very much.
- EForEndeavour 7y agoI'm embarrassed that I didn't know total annual US CO2e emissions have _dropped_ since circa 2005. My only source when I wrote my comment was the in-browser graph in the Wolfram Alpha search result for "us greenhouse gas emissions history" (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+greenhouse+gas+emissions+history https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+greenhouse+gas+emis...), which presents a data period of only 1990-2005. A more complete source is https://www.c2es.org/content/u-s-emissions/ https://www.c2es.org/content/u-s-emissions/. Thank you for reminding me not to hastily extrapolate data when it happens to fit my expectation of what's going on, and when actual data are readily available.
- Can_Not 7y agoHow much of that decrease is just moving the factory to China?