4 ms·

USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we

by sampo 6y ago

USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%. Apply linear extrapolation, and USA would go below Germany in 20 years. Extrapolating with exponential decay, in 40 years. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country... https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=~DEU

SiempreViernes 6y ago
Right that makes sense, also https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/
JauntyHatAngle 6y ago
Isn't it bunk to apply extrapolation to two countries that start from a different per capita base? Germany is significantly lower in per capita emissions so their reduction is (I'm assuming) a lot harder to achieve. It's like comparing fat loss between someone who starts overweight vs someone who is starting neutral bmi. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country=~USA#per-capita-how-much-co2-does-the-average-person-emit https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country... and add Germany. Happy to hear why I'm wrong, I'm certainly not an expert in stats or emissions.
tw04 6y ago
>USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%. Which is primarily due to Obama era regulations that Trump has done everything he can to roll back. Had the price of gas not skyrocketed and the mortgage crisis not hit, we would've had almost no improvements from 2000-2008. If you look at the data available from 2016-2018 we went BACKWARDS. You can't extrapolate the data from Obama's regulations that have rolled back and say: look it'll take care of itself.
- pg_bot 6y ago
  Emissions have gone down because of the fracking boom. Coal power plants are being replaced with natural gas which releases half as much carbon dioxide. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php#:~:text=Natural%20gas%20was%20the%20largest,power%20plants%20use%20steam%20turbines https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-....
  - tw04 6y ago
    The fracking boom has released massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere so we basically went from something we actively track (coal emissions) to something we don't track and thus aren't regulating or controlling (methane leaking from fracking wells). This is a net negative for planet earth... That didn't reduce emissions and may have actually increased them.
    - pg_bot 6y ago
      We do track methane in the atmosphere, that is NOAA's job. Methane in the atmosphere tripled from preindustrial times to 1995 and has started to level off since then. It doesn't look like fracking has lead to a dramatic increase in the release of methane in the atmosphere. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker-ch4/ https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker-ch4/
      - tw04 6y ago
        Leveled off? It's at record highs and has continued to increase every single year, it hasn't leveled off at all: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/1561/2020/ https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/1561/2020/ The NOAA tracking global methane has literally nothing to do with tracking methane output from individual wells - which again, we don't do. Moving the goal posts doesn't make you right. We DO actively track emissions from coal fired plants. We DO know that fracking has absolutely increased methane emissions: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/fracking-boom-tied-to-methane-spike-in-earths-atmosphere/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/frack... https://www.pnas.org/content/112/51/15597.abstract https://www.pnas.org/content/112/51/15597.abstract https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9ed2 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9ed2
xrmagnum 6y ago
Energy & emissions are complex to account for. I don’t know too much about the US but in France we had quite good results in term of reductions. But where do they come from? From the optimisation of our energy consumption? Or from the relocation of some of our companies abroad?
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >France we had quite good results in term of reductions. France has the benefit of large-scale nuclear power. Any given day, my home province of Ontario, is at around 85%-95% fossil-fuel-free emissions because of nuclear and hydro [1]. If instead we decided to go with solar and wind, then we'd be waiting until 2060 to cut CO2 emissions and burning much more natural gas until then ... just like Germany. [1] https://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html https://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html
_Microft 6y ago
Well, after the disaster at Fukushima, we started phasing out nuclear power. It was replaced by renewables. (This was super-stupid since we have a stable government, no enemies close by and basically no natural disasters [0] that would threaten our power plants.) We should have shut down coal plants instead but dwelling on what we should have done does not help. The bright side of this is that our emissions are decreasing despite still running coal plants. Once we shut these down, they will drop even more and this hopefully as early as possible. I hope it is going happen because of economic reasons, i.e. when coal becomes too expensive compared to other sources of energy because that would mean it would already happen before the scheduled phase-out. [0] If you are from elsewhere in the world, it might be hard to imagine how few threats of natural disasters we have in central Europe: there are basically no earthquakes, no tsunamis, no bush fires, no (real) hurricans (we call them 'storms'), no real tornadoes (it is such a rare thing that it usually makes it to national news if there is one), no (terrible) floods (well, every few decades there is a large flood somewhere here but that's it).
- afjl 6y ago
  Maybe it's a cost issue? Manufacturers depend heavily on low/stable energy prices, and I know that Germany exports a lot of manufactured goods and is trade-positive.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
In a global economy, per-country per-capita emissions mean little, as my consumption largely "counts" against another country that produces the goods I use. Germany has a much larger per-capita manufacturing and export sectors of their economy, I would expect their emissions to slow more slowly.
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
I think arguing percentages is misleading and is missing the point of the total environmental impact. Using the same data source you can truly see how much of an outlier the US carbon footprint is: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country=CHN~GRC~NOR~PRT~ITA~FRA~IRL~GBR~BRA~IND~JPN~CHE~POL~CAN~ZAF~NLD~EGY~ISR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country... Basically the large majority of countries sit below the 10 tonne per capita cut-off, with the outliers of US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Luxembourg above the 15 tonne cut-off (with Qatar being basically off the charts). I am not sure if it is just consumer behaviour differences or energy source differences and I am sure there will be multiple factors depending on the country and regions but these outlier countries are effectively emitting anywhere between 50% to 300% more emissions than any other population on Earth. The main issue here is population size: Luxembourg : 600k Qatar: 2.897M Saudi Arabia: 34.997M Canada: 37.885M US: 331.669M If you stop thinking per capita and actually take into account total population, you quickly realize that all other nations on Earth are dependent on US market carbon correction in order to avoid environmental collapse. Far more than any other foreign policy ineptitude from the current adminsistration it's the environmental inaction and downright resistance of US lobby driven policy that scares everyone else around the world. We are still on track for an inevitable major environmental collapse but it could still be vastly mitigated, if US politicians and citizens would get with the program.

by sampo 6y ago

SiempreViernes 6y ago

Right that makes sense, also https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/

JauntyHatAngle 6y ago

Isn't it bunk to apply extrapolation to two countries that start from a different per capita base? Germany is significantly lower in per capita emissions so their reduction is (I'm assuming) a lot harder to achieve. It's like comparing fat loss between someone who starts overweight vs someone who is starting neutral bmi. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country=~USA#per-capita-how-much-co2-does-the-average-person-emit https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country... and add Germany. Happy to hear why I'm wrong, I'm certainly not an expert in stats or emissions.

tw04 6y ago

>USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%. Which is primarily due to Obama era regulations that Trump has done everything he can to roll back. Had the price of gas not skyrocketed and the mortgage crisis not hit, we would've had almost no improvements from 2000-2008. If you look at the data available from 2016-2018 we went BACKWARDS. You can't extrapolate the data from Obama's regulations that have rolled back and say: look it'll take care of itself.

pg_bot 6y ago
Emissions have gone down because of the fracking boom. Coal power plants are being replaced with natural gas which releases half as much carbon dioxide. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php#:~:text=Natural%20gas%20was%20the%20largest,power%20plants%20use%20steam%20turbines https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-....
- tw04 6y ago
  The fracking boom has released massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere so we basically went from something we actively track (coal emissions) to something we don't track and thus aren't regulating or controlling (methane leaking from fracking wells). This is a net negative for planet earth... That didn't reduce emissions and may have actually increased them.
  - pg_bot 6y ago
    We do track methane in the atmosphere, that is NOAA's job. Methane in the atmosphere tripled from preindustrial times to 1995 and has started to level off since then. It doesn't look like fracking has lead to a dramatic increase in the release of methane in the atmosphere. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker-ch4/ https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker-ch4/
    - tw04 6y ago
      Leveled off? It's at record highs and has continued to increase every single year, it hasn't leveled off at all: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/1561/2020/ https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/1561/2020/ The NOAA tracking global methane has literally nothing to do with tracking methane output from individual wells - which again, we don't do. Moving the goal posts doesn't make you right. We DO actively track emissions from coal fired plants. We DO know that fracking has absolutely increased methane emissions: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/fracking-boom-tied-to-methane-spike-in-earths-atmosphere/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/frack... https://www.pnas.org/content/112/51/15597.abstract https://www.pnas.org/content/112/51/15597.abstract https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9ed2 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9ed2

xrmagnum 6y ago

Energy & emissions are complex to account for. I don’t know too much about the US but in France we had quite good results in term of reductions. But where do they come from? From the optimisation of our energy consumption? Or from the relocation of some of our companies abroad?

macspoofing 6y ago
>France we had quite good results in term of reductions. France has the benefit of large-scale nuclear power. Any given day, my home province of Ontario, is at around 85%-95% fossil-fuel-free emissions because of nuclear and hydro [1]. If instead we decided to go with solar and wind, then we'd be waiting until 2060 to cut CO2 emissions and burning much more natural gas until then ... just like Germany. [1] https://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html https://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html

_Microft 6y ago

Well, after the disaster at Fukushima, we started phasing out nuclear power. It was replaced by renewables. (This was super-stupid since we have a stable government, no enemies close by and basically no natural disasters [0] that would threaten our power plants.) We should have shut down coal plants instead but dwelling on what we should have done does not help. The bright side of this is that our emissions are decreasing despite still running coal plants. Once we shut these down, they will drop even more and this hopefully as early as possible. I hope it is going happen because of economic reasons, i.e. when coal becomes too expensive compared to other sources of energy because that would mean it would already happen before the scheduled phase-out. [0] If you are from elsewhere in the world, it might be hard to imagine how few threats of natural disasters we have in central Europe: there are basically no earthquakes, no tsunamis, no bush fires, no (real) hurricans (we call them 'storms'), no real tornadoes (it is such a rare thing that it usually makes it to national news if there is one), no (terrible) floods (well, every few decades there is a large flood somewhere here but that's it).

afjl 6y ago
Maybe it's a cost issue? Manufacturers depend heavily on low/stable energy prices, and I know that Germany exports a lot of manufactured goods and is trade-positive.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

In a global economy, per-country per-capita emissions mean little, as my consumption largely "counts" against another country that produces the goods I use. Germany has a much larger per-capita manufacturing and export sectors of their economy, I would expect their emissions to slow more slowly.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago

I think arguing percentages is misleading and is missing the point of the total environmental impact. Using the same data source you can truly see how much of an outlier the US carbon footprint is: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country=CHN~GRC~NOR~PRT~ITA~FRA~IRL~GBR~BRA~IND~JPN~CHE~POL~CAN~ZAF~NLD~EGY~ISR~USA https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country... Basically the large majority of countries sit below the 10 tonne per capita cut-off, with the outliers of US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Luxembourg above the 15 tonne cut-off (with Qatar being basically off the charts). I am not sure if it is just consumer behaviour differences or energy source differences and I am sure there will be multiple factors depending on the country and regions but these outlier countries are effectively emitting anywhere between 50% to 300% more emissions than any other population on Earth. The main issue here is population size: Luxembourg : 600k Qatar: 2.897M Saudi Arabia: 34.997M Canada: 37.885M US: 331.669M If you stop thinking per capita and actually take into account total population, you quickly realize that all other nations on Earth are dependent on US market carbon correction in order to avoid environmental collapse. Far more than any other foreign policy ineptitude from the current adminsistration it's the environmental inaction and downright resistance of US lobby driven policy that scares everyone else around the world. We are still on track for an inevitable major environmental collapse but it could still be vastly mitigated, if US politicians and citizens would get with the program.