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U.S. per capita carbon emissions are lower now than in 1918
- version_five 5y agoI remember politicians where I live congratulating themselves on meeting some set of CO2 targets a few years ago. The reality is, we lost most of our manufacturing sector, so energy and fuel use went down naturally. This chart has no meaning without some kind of supply chain adjustment to account for where people get the stuff they consume.
- xadhominemx 5y agoNot true. People have done the math and our emissions do not change that much if you do it by end product consumption vs production. https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
- version_five 5y agoInteresting thanks. I'm curious what the intuition is for why. My apparently wrong intuition is that if we're importing all our goods, we're incurring the emissions associated with their production + transportation in other places.
- xadhominemx 5y agoA lot of emissions are from transport, electricity production, cement production, and heating; none of those are offshore And in terms of manufacturing, while a lot of the labor intensive (but more emissions light) manufacturing jobs have gone overseas due to lower wages, most heavy industry (chemicals, etc) has remained onshore because those products are bulky
- tunesmith 5y ago(We have 225 million more people now than in 1918)
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- jb1991 5y agoExactly. Per Capita seems somewhat irrelevant here.
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- antisthenes 5y agoDoesn't take into account transportation and heating with fossil fuels. This gets posted fairly regularly, but I'm not sure what the take-away is supposed to be. I think if you post something like this, you should at least prompt the discussion to start in some way, so that it isn't just a blank graph. Yes, coal is dying as far as electricity generation goes. Has been for a decade.
- philipkglass 5y agoThe graph caption says "Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels for energy and cement production. Land use change is not included." Is the caption incorrect?
- sanjiwatsuki 5y agoThe metrics don't really change much if you account for CO2 emissions needed for production/transportation: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?...
- godelski 5y agoAlternative title: US per capita emissions at lowest levels since 1964. I'm not sure which is more accurate but I believe the one I proposed is. It is still a good sign that we're decreasing but I do not think the title accurately indicates the state of things and I think people assumed it as a smooth curve up then down between 1918 and now and not a low and chaotic period between 1918 and 1960. My fear is that people often respond to the title and not the content. While I'd rather have the latter I think we should make title as accurate as possible and understand what assumptions people will make.
- nabla9 5y agoIt's not about accuracy. They demonstrate different things. Producing the GDP/capita of today with the same CO2/capita as 1918 is incredible. That's why the date was chosen.
- godelski 5y ago> Producing the GDP/capita of today with the same CO2/capita as 1918 is incredible. Is it as incredible as producing the same GDP/capita as 1960? Why or why not?
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- akomtu 5y agoSo it was 15T/person in 1920, then it crossed the 20T mark in 70s and now has fallen back to 15T. The catch is that the US population has increased quite a lot. Are there similar charts for CO2 absorbtion by oceans and trees?
- _Microft 5y agoMove the slider to 1921, see how suddenly the current value is 24% above that one. It's basically a meaningless, cherrypicked point in time that was submitted. This feels misleading at best and disingenious at worst.
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- chrisseaton 5y agoRight. Emissions now lower than when everyone was individually burning wood and coal 24 hours a day. Ok? Is that surprising or useful or actionable?
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- l332mn 5y agoThey're not, though. Household emissions are many, many times larger now. Also wood is not a fossil fuel.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> They're not, though. Are you saying the data is simply wrong? > Household emissions are many, many times larger now. The article is about per capita emissions, not household emissions. > Also wood is not a fossil fuel. Nobody said it was. What's this got to do with anything?
- l332mn 5y ago> Are you saying the data is simply wrong? The data only measures cement production and fossil fuel burning, as the caption says. It says nothing about total emissions per capita. Hence the title is wrong, yes. > The article is about per capita emissions, not household emissions. Household emissions contribute the largest share of per capita emissions. But hardly any household emissions are measured by "cement production and fossil fuel burning". > Nobody said it was. What's this got to do with anything? Burning wood is carbon neutral.
- RobLach 5y agoAlso 63% higher than 1932. Cherry picked statistical comparison.
- klysm 5y agoProbably says more about how many people there are than the carbon production.
- 908B64B197 5y agoIt's interesting to look at the long term trends, especially when looking at some of the largest economies on the planet. Comparing the US[0] and China[1], the US has: - Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%) - A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%) Meanwhile for the same period China has had - a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%) - 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007 So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china
- merrvk 5y agoTime to invade china and stop them destroying the earth
- CountSessine 5y agoOr... perhaps just by having everything manufactured in China? Which doesn't work so well when you're China?
- nielsbot 5y agoOr anywhere else in the world, eventually. (Soon?)
- ivalm 5y agoUS exports dirty production to other countries so some of the drop is not real (just gets allocated to other countries). Also despite this we still produce more than 2x more per capita than China.
- l332mn 5y agoThese graphs measures "burning of fossil fuels for energy and cement production" only, which only represents a fraction of the total emissions in a country. It doesn't measure household emissions or food production. It also heavily favours post-industrial countries compared to countries still in the process of building heavy infrastructure (which requires cement production), like China. These data are biased and self-serving in that sense. US citizens still consume five times more than Chinese citizens in terms of resources, which is unsustainable.
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- l332mn 5y agoTo put it bluntly, what the title says is just not true. This graph measures the "burning of fossil fuels for energy and cement production". Cement production and burning of fossil fules only. Hence it is misleading at best. It doesn't at all include household emissions or food production, which represent the largest share emissions, probably indirectly around 80%-90% of all emissions, if we measure the whole life cycle of products consumed. I.e. what we're seeing here is a tiny fraction of the total carbon footprint. Considering that consumption today in terms of resources per capita has vastly increased, the title is simply a blatantly false statement.
- nabla9 5y ago>include household emissions How is that not burning of fossil fuels for energy?
- l332mn 5y agoEmissions from household consumption is so much more than simply burning fossil fuel for energy, which amounts to only about 20% in total.
- philipkglass 5y agoThat is incorrect. In 2019, CO2 emissions accounted for about 80% of total U.S. anthropogenic GHG emissions (based on 100-year global warming potential). Fossil fuel combustion (burning) for energy accounted for 74% of total U.S. GHG emissions and for 92% of total U.S. anthropogenic CO2 emissions. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/energy-and-the-environment/where-greenhouse-gases-come-from.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/energy-and-the-environme...
- l332mn 5y agoFirst of all, that statistic is not about household emissions, but emissions in total (production only perhaps). On the other hand, it doesn't include all types of household emissions either, because it doesn't account for the entire life cycle of emissions tied to products that has been produced in other countries, and which US citizens consume to a much higher degree than the global average. Household consumption is the main driver of emissions, and high-consuming societies bears much of the blame for the emissions generated by production which has been outsourced to other countries.
- im_down_w_otp 5y agoI'm not sure why this measurement would matter very much. Insofar as I understand it, the amount of atmosphere doesn't adjust based on human population size, so a per capita indicator isn't all that useful for most of the reasons one even bothers to keep track of carbon emissions in the first place.
- timoth3y 5y agoIt's certainly good that it's down, but if you overlay the charts of the US and China, you can see that post-2000, the US reduction in CO2 is mirrored by a Chinese increase. It's unclear how much of the US reduction is due to genuine improvements in energy efficiencies and how much is due to simply moving a lot of manufacturing and heavy industry offshore.
- munificent 5y agoReally the only statistic that matters is the global one. Otherwise, all this might show is the US outsourcing its manufacturing to China.
- pksebben 5y ago> Note: CO₂ emissions are measured on a production basis, meaning they do not correct for emissions embedded in traded goods. So, we're leaving all the carbon involved in the production inspired by our consumptive habits on China. This is utter nonsense.