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Believe it or not, western countries have reduced carbon emissions over the last ~15 years, in both absolute and per capita terms (despite a growing population)

by bko 5y ago

Believe it or not, western countries have reduced carbon emissions over the last ~15 years, in both absolute and per capita terms (despite a growing population). The only countries that are growing their carbon emissions are developing countries; mainly China, India and Russia. China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita. And it's not that China is producing emissions during manufacturing goods the entire world consumes. Take a look at "China: Consumption-based accounting: how do emissions compare when we adjust for trade?" and you'll see ~90% of their emissions are for consumption [2] > Annual consumption-based emissions are domestic emissions adjusted for trade. If a country imports goods the CO₂ emissions needed to produce such goods are added to its domestic emissions; if it exports goods then this is subtracted. 2018 had 8.96 bn carbon tons in consumption out of a total of 9.96 bn total tons (~90% consumption) The good news is that China is good at collective action. The bad news is, they're China. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide... [1] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china

eganist 5y ago
I'm looking at how China's currently pummeling their tech sector for the sake of the party* and am hoping that they'll apply the same decisioning to their emissions-heavy industries as well. Doubt it'll happen, but I can be wishful with my thoughts. ---- * https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/China-s-tech-crackdown-widens-to-Tencent-from-Alibaba https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/China-s-tech-cra...
- russli1993 5y ago
  First of all, saying China's actions against tech sector is for the sake of the ccp, or that ccp simply felt they are too big is a narrow way to look at it. And makes the regulatory actions as a political game and not legitimate. You need to look at case by case. I argue each case has a legit issue, and in many of the cases, government is enforcing the laws that already exists but weren't enforced earlier. Chinese government didn't place any regulatory burden on tech sector earlier. But as the tech sector grew, there have been significant issues: 1) consolidation of power and use dominate market power to negatively affect the competition 2) Vast collection of personal data, commercializing personal data detriment to privacy 3) Use of algorithms and big data to detriment of consumers or workers. Ex: Tests shows that Didi chuxing show more expensive prices on a device you use to order multiple times before than a device you have not for the same trip. meituan's delivery algorithm drives delivery workers to the extreme. The delivery algorithm also gets harder if you work harder, resulting in ever intensive work condition, and they penalizes you each time you can't meet the algorithm. I can present my points for supporting each of the regulatory actions but I won't go into details here. Overall, my view is that these regulatory actions are overdue. It doesn't mean we don't want tech sector. The society is a web of relationships between entities. Any time an entity that has a lot of advantage over another party, I argue that the red line should at least be that the more powerful entity shouldn't use its power to the detriment of the weaker party. The role of the government and laws should be to at least be to prevent that from happening. In terms of tech, the relationship is tech company vs its competitors, vs consumers, vs workers. In these relationships, a tech company can have significantly more advantaged because data it collected, characteristics of a digital business, network effects and capital. And if the weaker party is negatively affected because of the interaction between the powerful entity and the power difference, that should be a sign that public power should step in to either protect the weaker party or increase weaker party's power. In regards to environment. I can list specific actions Chinese government took just recently: 1) A carbon credit and trading system is operational. The first batch of companies required to tally carbon credits and purchase credits include 2000 companies in the power generation sector, covering an emission of 4 billion tons of co2 annually. Steel, metal, cement, petro-chemical sectors will also be included as the plan progresses(https://www.reuters.com/article/china-carbon-market-0714-wedn-idCNKBS2EK0K4 https://www.reuters.com/article/china-carbon-market-0714-wed...) 2) Government is ordering more crude steel capacity reduction, can you imagine any country where the government is forcing businesses to reduce production and capacity 3) Aug 1, government removed export tax benefit for 23 types of steel, and placed export tariffs up to 40% on a few types of steel. Does any other country has self imposed export tariffs? The purpose looks like reduce exports of energy heavy, pollution heavy, and low margin metal products. Aiding steel capacity reduction. (http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0801/c1004-32177024.html http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0801/c1004-32177024.htm...) 4) Many state owned companies, such as state grid, petrochina now have even more green development tasks and initiatives. For example, more ultra high voltage DC powerlines are being built. This removes one of the primary adoption blocker for more renewables in china. One of the successful development model is villages in the western provinces are building solar farms, the revenue from power sales are dividend given to the local people, increasing renewables at the same time increasing people's income. And some villages in the dessert, have found its even possible to grow plants under solar panel's shade where before the sun was too strong. Now they have agriculture + solar energy development parks. Solar, wind, hydro installation are all increasing. In terms of industry and private sector, EV sales continue to grow, I believe EVs in China, given the quality of the products, market competition and gains in infrastructure, is starting to reach the consumer acceptance. Sales of Chinese companies in green sector, such as CATL is growing by a lot, stocks reaching all time high.
vlkr 5y ago
China is less troubling than US if you look at per capita numbers: US 15.52, China 7.38 tons of CO2
- bko 5y ago
  Why does it matter? You should care about the absolute numbers. The amount of CO2 the earth can reasonably sustain doesn't go up as the global population grows...
  - reitzensteinm 5y ago
    So if China splits in to West China and East China, each can emit twice as much CO2?
    - bko 5y ago
      China is more or less a single political body. If you're talking about large scale political coordination to prevent climate events, then it makes sense to focus on the largest autonomous contributor
      - savingsPossible 5y ago
        This is a coordination problem. A problem in which everyone is supposed to suffer a little to prevent greater collective suffering in the future. It has one important characteristic: everyone would rather not suffer and let some else suffer. When problems are like that, there is need for coordination, for people to agree on what is a fair amount of suffering for each actor. I happen to agree that CO2 per capita is a much better measure of what is fair, especially when comparing the US and China, both countries that are growing very little in population
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Another important characteristic is that one tribe has already enjoyed (and continues to enjoy) significant quality of life enhancements due to much higher consumption of fossil fuel per capita. Politically, you’re simply not going to get anywhere with asking everyone to suffer “a little”. Also, the whole detached single family house with 2 car garage on quarter acre lot has to go, but Americans are not going to give it up, and other countries’ people aspiring for it are certainly not going to give it up.
cjbenedikt 5y ago
"China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita" If you calculate emissions per capita (US 350m - China 1b) then the US still beats China handily...just saying.
- epistasis 5y ago
  This is a good point, and China has basically already risen to European levels of energy use and emissions. For the services available to the typical Chinese person, I wouldn't expect this to rise a ton more, unless China adopts US-style car-dependent land use for the majority of its population. Look at the difference in consumption between car-dependent city planning and the urban cores where cars are not a necessity: https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps That's a bigger difference than the US-China difference. But even if China does decide to go that route, they have two other advantages over the US: 1) the housing growth will come from new builds that are far better insulated, and use heat pumps rather than fossil fuel heat, and 2) they will be able to grow the car fleet with EVs, rather than having a huge existing fleet of ICE.
lovemenot 5y ago
>> The bad news is, they're China. Not sure what your point is here, but whatever it may be, I feel sure it is not helpful wrt to climate policy in the world's largest emitter. If you have some other axe to grind, maybe take it elsewhere. China is dominant in industries that are currently significant in renewables. Especially solar PV. They already have the largest EV fleet, including buses. The next industry to really matter will be energy storage. China is positioning to dominate in batteries too. If they do, good luck to them. Not because I love everything about China, but because somebody needs to scale this and if China does, then that's good for energy transition. >> they have a growing population Currently about +0.3% per annum. Which puts them around the lower 30th percentile of countries by population growth. China is certainly large, but it is not growing much and should soon be shrinking.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kumarvvr 5y ago
> The only countries that are growing their carbon emissions are developing countries; mainly China, India and Russia Developed nations have polluted the planet for decades, with highest rates of energy consumption per capita. They have failed to build systems and processess that enables sustainable living. They have lived their excess and now lecture the world that their "90% of emissions are from consumption" One group of people have taken the world for granted. Now want everyone else to bear the cost. Typical.
- bko 5y ago
  It's not lecturing. It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. Even if emissions went to zero, it would only push the timeline back a few years This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be on preventing that to happen rather than Monday morning quarterbacking the last 100 years of industrialization?
  - kumarvvr 5y ago
    >This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be one preventing that to happen? Here is a better idea. How about developed nations, with their might of research, resources and human capital, put aside economic growth for a while and steer the world towards a sustainable future. Its not about moral victories. The approach of developed nations has been wrong. You see people like Trump and lose all hope for humanity. There is only so much a developing country can do when you have scenarios where India has 4 times the population of USA, yet per capita Carbon production is 7 times less. Still, it is the developing nations who have been most successful in meeting climate targets, be it in renewable energy or reduction in per capita carbon generation. Sure, I like to whine and point out the moral failures of the developed world, but it is rightly deserved so. Because developing countries also act on climate change, in spite of knowing the effects it has on their economies. But god forbid angering an American voter by talking about being responsible for climate change.
alexgmcm 5y ago
But how much of this is due to Western nations essentially outsourcing emissions to China by shifting manufacturing etc. there? The per-capita emissions are important because countries with high per-capita emissions likely have a lot of low-hanging fruit. I mean reducing per-capita emissions in the USA could be done by improving public transport etc. whereas in China it would likely be condemning millions of people to poverty.
- bko 5y ago
  Read the second part of my comment. It's about 10% from trade based manufacturing. Of course this is difficult to measure, but I think its safe to say the lion's share of CO2 emissions are from consumption. > And it's not that China is producing emissions during manufacturing goods the entire world consumes. Take a look at "China: Consumption-based accounting: how do emissions compare when we adjust for trade?" and you'll see ~90% of their emissions are for consumption [2] [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china
  - alexgmcm 5y ago
    Still their per-capita emissions are lower, which is kind of what really matters given nations and borders are essentially a social construction, personal consumption/emissions are not. As I mentioned previously, reducing China's total emissions would require reducing their per-capita emissions to such a low amount it would essentially be condemning much of the population to live in abject poverty (especially as large parts of the nation has not yet industrialised). Given the far, far higher per-capita emissions of countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia etc. it wouldn't surprise me if China refused to slow economic development in order to reduce emissions.
- ostenning 5y ago
  This is a big factor. China for example has excellent fabrication and assembly services for PCBs. Does anyone know any services in the West that compete with the likes of JLCPCB?
  - 5y ago
agent327 5y ago
The West lowered their CO2 production by moving all manufacturing to China, so this isn't too surprising. Also, China, like most of the world except for Afrika, has a shrinking population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate). China needs to start building nuclear power plants and replace all those coal plants.
- bko 5y ago
  Read the second part of my comment. 90% of Chinese CO2 emissions are not trade based.
  - nemetroid 5y ago
    That doesn’t make the ”CO2 outsourcing” claim untrue. For the 1990-2008 period, the paper[1] cited as the source for the graph in question notes: > Collectively, the net CO2 emission reduction of ∼2% (0.3 Gt CO2) in Annex B countries from 1990 to 2008 is much smaller than the additional net emission transfer of 1.2 Gt CO2 from non-Annex B to Annex B countries (equivalent to subtracting the net emission transfers in 2008 from 1990 in Fig. 2). The situation may have improved since then[2], but already in 2008, China’s consumption share of its own emissions was 80%. This figure in itself neither proves or disproves whether developed nations have outsourced their emissions. 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/21/8903.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/21/8903.full.pdf 2: Our World in Data cites ”Global Carbon Budget” for newer figures, but it’s raw data, and I’m currently not able to process it myself.
  - agent327 5y ago
    I just straight-out don't believe that. Maybe this is by some incredibly narrow definition of CO2 production, whereby if the produce of a factory is first shipped to a harbor by a Chinese company before leaving China, it counts as 'internal'?
    - bumby 5y ago
      This study is a bit old and I’m ignoring their “technology based” method because I don’t think the climate cares if a country would have emitted less if they had equivalent tech[*] , but it shows Chinas consumption based emissions is about 84% of its production based emissions. I.e., 84% of the emissions generated in China were for products/services consumed in China. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901118307536 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146290111... To your point, though, the article corroborates the emissions export claim. (The US is shown as a next exporter in emissions, with consumption based emissions ~13% higher than production emissions). Both points can be simultaneously true. [*]for the sake of this discussion, at least. I can understand the relevance for creating policy though
joshgree88 5y ago
We have decreased ours and they have increased theirs but we are still buying more and more shit from them - their emissions are our emissions - while the demand side exists the supply will too - it will just be supplied from somewhere else...
mytailorisrich 5y ago
> China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita. That is just providing proof that we cannot eradicate poverty on the planet without destroying it in the process with 8 billion human beings. And this is just CO2 emissions but the issue is with consumption of resources in general: What is happening is simply that consumption of resources increases when people are lifted out of poverty (quite obviously since that's pretty much poverty means). The only sustainable way for human development is to bring global population down at the same time at global standard of living increases.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Not sure why you are being devoted. Having say, half our current population would have made this problem considerably easier. People do seem to cut back their baby making as they move from agricultural to industrial, it’s just a much slower process than we would prefer to help with this issue.
  - gghhzzgghhzz 5y ago
    Would make little difference. Majority of consumption is coming from small percentage of the world's population. If everyone on the planet consumed at the rate of the top 1% we'd need 10s of earths. Plus it's also dog whistle. Who should decrease the population? Western white people? You are talking about communities subsistence farming with large families, and trying to reduce the size of those families through pushing them to industrialise. but what does it matter? those current families no matter how large, don't consume anything.
    - mytailorisrich 5y ago
      > If everyone on the planet consumed at the rate of the top 1% we'd need 10s of earths. But that's exactly the point. Although it's a bit more than the top 1%, more like top 10-15%. What do you think eradicating poverty and global development means? Exactly that: A developed world means a world consuming the same as, say, Europeans do. This only works if population is reduced, even drastically reduced because, quite obviously, it does not work with 8+ billion people. > Who should decrease the population? Western white people? Who should remain dirt poor? Brown people? This is ridiculous. This is a global issue. Poverty should be eradicated globally, the global population should reduce. Do not make it a racial, if not racist, issue.
failuser 5y ago
I’m pretty sure Russia is still way below (50%) the 1990 levels though.
adolph 5y ago
China's population will age out soon enough and with that their emissions should reduce. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101677/population-distribution-by-detailed-age-group-in-china/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101677/population-distr...
keewee7 5y ago
Chinese rise in emissions is because of Western manufacturing. Russian rise in emissions is because of Western European need for heating. If we stop outsourcing manufacturing to China and stop buying gas from Russia their emissions will also fall. But India and Africa are significantly poorer than China and Russia. India and Africa should be allowed to emit CO2 for the next two decades or they will remain poor forever.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Wait. Are you saying that Russian gas, combusted in the EU, counts towards Russia's CO2 output? that makes zero sense.
  - keewee7 5y ago
    The natural gas industry in Russia emits a lot of CO2 by itself. Generally the fossil fuel industry is one of the largest emitters if CO2 by itself. That is why countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia are among the top CO2 emitters in the world.
- hnmullany 5y ago
  Chinese emissions are primarily because of a choice to exploit its thermal coal reserves for power generation instead of going nuclear. Probably was cheaper and faster to go that way - but it was definitely a choice.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    As far as I can tell from an American perspective, the US has always done what was cheapest and fastest, and we still do. I sure wouldn’t expect China to do anything different.
  - liuliu 5y ago
    China only recently has a 3G reactor design that is 100% Chinese IP. The state-owned enterprise that handles nuclear reactor construction is on the U.S. entity list.
Iwan-Zotow 5y ago
> mainly China, India and Russia. nope, not Russia Russia is one of the few countries building nuclear. "A share of nuclear power plants (branches of Rosenergoatom Concern, part of ROSATOM’s Electric Power Division) in the energy mix of Russia was 20.28% in 2020. In 2019, this indicator was 19.04%." "CO2 emissions decreased by -2.13% over the previous year (2015), representing a decrease by -36,108,200 tons over 2015, when CO2 emissions were 1,698,007,500 tons. CO2 emissions per capita in the Russian Federation are equivalent to 11.44 tons per person (based on a population of 145,275,383 in 2016), a decrease by -0.27% over the figure of 11.71 CO2 tons per person registered in 2015; this represents a change of -2.3% in CO2 emissions per capita."
keewee7 5y ago
Blaming China and India is the typical Republican talking point about climate change. There is a reason Noam Chomsky has called the Republican party the most dangerous organization in the world because of how they promote Western inaction on climate change.
robinsoh 5y ago
> Believe it or not, western countries have reduced carbon emissions over the last ~15 years, in both absolute and per capita terms (despite a growing population). The only countries that are growing their carbon emissions are developing countries; mainly China, India and Russia. USA: 15.50 metric tons (2016) India: 1.82 metric tons (2016) Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... One American is emitting 15 Indians worth of carbon emissions. In terms of your claim that "western countries have reduced carbon emissions" it is important to realize that increasingly developed countries have been outsourcing most of their high polluting industries. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/15331040/emissions-outsourcing-carbon-leakage https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/1533104... "During the early 2000s, these “emissions transfers” were growing at a stunning pace, nearly 11 percent per year, as more and more Western manufacturing was shifting to Asia. Factories making computers, electronics, apparel, and furniture would close in the US, open up in China, and then ship their products back home to the US. Americans got the goods; China got the pollution (and the jobs)."
- mattlondon 5y ago
  > One American is emitting 15 Indians worth of carbon emissions. 15.5 / 1.82 = 8.5 So more like One American is emitting 9 Indian's worth of carbon emissions. Still a lot though.
  - gandalf013 5y ago
    India's population is approximately 4.5 times that of USA, so the actual ratio is "one American is emitting 35 Indians worth of carbon emissions".
    - rhaps0dy 5y ago
      These numbers are already per capita, so the population difference is already accounted for. So one USian emits as much as 9 Indians. Which is still a lot.
  - 5y ago
Haga 5y ago
China is good at pretending to be good at collective action.
kergonath 5y ago
> China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita. You seem to have discovered that the lifestyle of western countries is unsustainable (and the US is particularly bad). It does not make it China's fault.
Pokepokalypse 5y ago
believe it or not, this is a WHOLE WORLD problem. A "western country" can not "conveniently" cut their carbon emissions, and still buy shit manufactured overseas, and pretend everything is hunkey-dorey.

by bko 5y ago

eganist 5y ago

I'm looking at how China's currently pummeling their tech sector for the sake of the party* and am hoping that they'll apply the same decisioning to their emissions-heavy industries as well. Doubt it'll happen, but I can be wishful with my thoughts. ---- * https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/China-s-tech-crackdown-widens-to-Tencent-from-Alibaba https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/China-s-tech-cra...

russli1993 5y ago
First of all, saying China's actions against tech sector is for the sake of the ccp, or that ccp simply felt they are too big is a narrow way to look at it. And makes the regulatory actions as a political game and not legitimate. You need to look at case by case. I argue each case has a legit issue, and in many of the cases, government is enforcing the laws that already exists but weren't enforced earlier. Chinese government didn't place any regulatory burden on tech sector earlier. But as the tech sector grew, there have been significant issues: 1) consolidation of power and use dominate market power to negatively affect the competition 2) Vast collection of personal data, commercializing personal data detriment to privacy 3) Use of algorithms and big data to detriment of consumers or workers. Ex: Tests shows that Didi chuxing show more expensive prices on a device you use to order multiple times before than a device you have not for the same trip. meituan's delivery algorithm drives delivery workers to the extreme. The delivery algorithm also gets harder if you work harder, resulting in ever intensive work condition, and they penalizes you each time you can't meet the algorithm. I can present my points for supporting each of the regulatory actions but I won't go into details here. Overall, my view is that these regulatory actions are overdue. It doesn't mean we don't want tech sector. The society is a web of relationships between entities. Any time an entity that has a lot of advantage over another party, I argue that the red line should at least be that the more powerful entity shouldn't use its power to the detriment of the weaker party. The role of the government and laws should be to at least be to prevent that from happening. In terms of tech, the relationship is tech company vs its competitors, vs consumers, vs workers. In these relationships, a tech company can have significantly more advantaged because data it collected, characteristics of a digital business, network effects and capital. And if the weaker party is negatively affected because of the interaction between the powerful entity and the power difference, that should be a sign that public power should step in to either protect the weaker party or increase weaker party's power. In regards to environment. I can list specific actions Chinese government took just recently: 1) A carbon credit and trading system is operational. The first batch of companies required to tally carbon credits and purchase credits include 2000 companies in the power generation sector, covering an emission of 4 billion tons of co2 annually. Steel, metal, cement, petro-chemical sectors will also be included as the plan progresses(https://www.reuters.com/article/china-carbon-market-0714-wedn-idCNKBS2EK0K4 https://www.reuters.com/article/china-carbon-market-0714-wed...) 2) Government is ordering more crude steel capacity reduction, can you imagine any country where the government is forcing businesses to reduce production and capacity 3) Aug 1, government removed export tax benefit for 23 types of steel, and placed export tariffs up to 40% on a few types of steel. Does any other country has self imposed export tariffs? The purpose looks like reduce exports of energy heavy, pollution heavy, and low margin metal products. Aiding steel capacity reduction. (http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0801/c1004-32177024.html http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0801/c1004-32177024.htm...) 4) Many state owned companies, such as state grid, petrochina now have even more green development tasks and initiatives. For example, more ultra high voltage DC powerlines are being built. This removes one of the primary adoption blocker for more renewables in china. One of the successful development model is villages in the western provinces are building solar farms, the revenue from power sales are dividend given to the local people, increasing renewables at the same time increasing people's income. And some villages in the dessert, have found its even possible to grow plants under solar panel's shade where before the sun was too strong. Now they have agriculture + solar energy development parks. Solar, wind, hydro installation are all increasing. In terms of industry and private sector, EV sales continue to grow, I believe EVs in China, given the quality of the products, market competition and gains in infrastructure, is starting to reach the consumer acceptance. Sales of Chinese companies in green sector, such as CATL is growing by a lot, stocks reaching all time high.

vlkr 5y ago

China is less troubling than US if you look at per capita numbers: US 15.52, China 7.38 tons of CO2

bko 5y ago
Why does it matter? You should care about the absolute numbers. The amount of CO2 the earth can reasonably sustain doesn't go up as the global population grows...
- reitzensteinm 5y ago
  So if China splits in to West China and East China, each can emit twice as much CO2?
  - bko 5y ago
    China is more or less a single political body. If you're talking about large scale political coordination to prevent climate events, then it makes sense to focus on the largest autonomous contributor
    - savingsPossible 5y ago
      This is a coordination problem. A problem in which everyone is supposed to suffer a little to prevent greater collective suffering in the future. It has one important characteristic: everyone would rather not suffer and let some else suffer. When problems are like that, there is need for coordination, for people to agree on what is a fair amount of suffering for each actor. I happen to agree that CO2 per capita is a much better measure of what is fair, especially when comparing the US and China, both countries that are growing very little in population
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Another important characteristic is that one tribe has already enjoyed (and continues to enjoy) significant quality of life enhancements due to much higher consumption of fossil fuel per capita. Politically, you’re simply not going to get anywhere with asking everyone to suffer “a little”. Also, the whole detached single family house with 2 car garage on quarter acre lot has to go, but Americans are not going to give it up, and other countries’ people aspiring for it are certainly not going to give it up.

cjbenedikt 5y ago

"China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita" If you calculate emissions per capita (US 350m - China 1b) then the US still beats China handily...just saying.

epistasis 5y ago
This is a good point, and China has basically already risen to European levels of energy use and emissions. For the services available to the typical Chinese person, I wouldn't expect this to rise a ton more, unless China adopts US-style car-dependent land use for the majority of its population. Look at the difference in consumption between car-dependent city planning and the urban cores where cars are not a necessity: https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps That's a bigger difference than the US-China difference. But even if China does decide to go that route, they have two other advantages over the US: 1) the housing growth will come from new builds that are far better insulated, and use heat pumps rather than fossil fuel heat, and 2) they will be able to grow the car fleet with EVs, rather than having a huge existing fleet of ICE.

lovemenot 5y ago

>> The bad news is, they're China. Not sure what your point is here, but whatever it may be, I feel sure it is not helpful wrt to climate policy in the world's largest emitter. If you have some other axe to grind, maybe take it elsewhere. China is dominant in industries that are currently significant in renewables. Especially solar PV. They already have the largest EV fleet, including buses. The next industry to really matter will be energy storage. China is positioning to dominate in batteries too. If they do, good luck to them. Not because I love everything about China, but because somebody needs to scale this and if China does, then that's good for energy transition. >> they have a growing population Currently about +0.3% per annum. Which puts them around the lower 30th percentile of countries by population growth. China is certainly large, but it is not growing much and should soon be shrinking.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kumarvvr 5y ago

> The only countries that are growing their carbon emissions are developing countries; mainly China, India and Russia Developed nations have polluted the planet for decades, with highest rates of energy consumption per capita. They have failed to build systems and processess that enables sustainable living. They have lived their excess and now lecture the world that their "90% of emissions are from consumption" One group of people have taken the world for granted. Now want everyone else to bear the cost. Typical.

bko 5y ago
It's not lecturing. It's pointing out that there is no realistic scenario in which western countries can prevent CO2 from getting to dangerous levels. Even if emissions went to zero, it would only push the timeline back a few years This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be on preventing that to happen rather than Monday morning quarterbacking the last 100 years of industrialization?
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  >This is the problem I have with people who claim to care about the catastrophic impact of climate change. It's more about claiming moral victory over western countries than it is about actually working to reduce the CO2 in the environment. If someone was about to destroy the world, wouldn't your main focus be one preventing that to happen? Here is a better idea. How about developed nations, with their might of research, resources and human capital, put aside economic growth for a while and steer the world towards a sustainable future. Its not about moral victories. The approach of developed nations has been wrong. You see people like Trump and lose all hope for humanity. There is only so much a developing country can do when you have scenarios where India has 4 times the population of USA, yet per capita Carbon production is 7 times less. Still, it is the developing nations who have been most successful in meeting climate targets, be it in renewable energy or reduction in per capita carbon generation. Sure, I like to whine and point out the moral failures of the developed world, but it is rightly deserved so. Because developing countries also act on climate change, in spite of knowing the effects it has on their economies. But god forbid angering an American voter by talking about being responsible for climate change.

alexgmcm 5y ago

But how much of this is due to Western nations essentially outsourcing emissions to China by shifting manufacturing etc. there? The per-capita emissions are important because countries with high per-capita emissions likely have a lot of low-hanging fruit. I mean reducing per-capita emissions in the USA could be done by improving public transport etc. whereas in China it would likely be condemning millions of people to poverty.

bko 5y ago
Read the second part of my comment. It's about 10% from trade based manufacturing. Of course this is difficult to measure, but I think its safe to say the lion's share of CO2 emissions are from consumption. > And it's not that China is producing emissions during manufacturing goods the entire world consumes. Take a look at "China: Consumption-based accounting: how do emissions compare when we adjust for trade?" and you'll see ~90% of their emissions are for consumption [2] [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china
- alexgmcm 5y ago
  Still their per-capita emissions are lower, which is kind of what really matters given nations and borders are essentially a social construction, personal consumption/emissions are not. As I mentioned previously, reducing China's total emissions would require reducing their per-capita emissions to such a low amount it would essentially be condemning much of the population to live in abject poverty (especially as large parts of the nation has not yet industrialised). Given the far, far higher per-capita emissions of countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia etc. it wouldn't surprise me if China refused to slow economic development in order to reduce emissions.
ostenning 5y ago
This is a big factor. China for example has excellent fabrication and assembly services for PCBs. Does anyone know any services in the West that compete with the likes of JLCPCB?
- 5y ago

agent327 5y ago

The West lowered their CO2 production by moving all manufacturing to China, so this isn't too surprising. Also, China, like most of the world except for Afrika, has a shrinking population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_rate). China needs to start building nuclear power plants and replace all those coal plants.

bko 5y ago
Read the second part of my comment. 90% of Chinese CO2 emissions are not trade based.
- nemetroid 5y ago
  That doesn’t make the ”CO2 outsourcing” claim untrue. For the 1990-2008 period, the paper[1] cited as the source for the graph in question notes: > Collectively, the net CO2 emission reduction of ∼2% (0.3 Gt CO2) in Annex B countries from 1990 to 2008 is much smaller than the additional net emission transfer of 1.2 Gt CO2 from non-Annex B to Annex B countries (equivalent to subtracting the net emission transfers in 2008 from 1990 in Fig. 2). The situation may have improved since then[2], but already in 2008, China’s consumption share of its own emissions was 80%. This figure in itself neither proves or disproves whether developed nations have outsourced their emissions. 1: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/21/8903.full.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/21/8903.full.pdf 2: Our World in Data cites ”Global Carbon Budget” for newer figures, but it’s raw data, and I’m currently not able to process it myself.
- agent327 5y ago
  I just straight-out don't believe that. Maybe this is by some incredibly narrow definition of CO2 production, whereby if the produce of a factory is first shipped to a harbor by a Chinese company before leaving China, it counts as 'internal'?
  - bumby 5y ago
    This study is a bit old and I’m ignoring their “technology based” method because I don’t think the climate cares if a country would have emitted less if they had equivalent tech[*] , but it shows Chinas consumption based emissions is about 84% of its production based emissions. I.e., 84% of the emissions generated in China were for products/services consumed in China. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901118307536 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146290111... To your point, though, the article corroborates the emissions export claim. (The US is shown as a next exporter in emissions, with consumption based emissions ~13% higher than production emissions). Both points can be simultaneously true. [*]for the sake of this discussion, at least. I can understand the relevance for creating policy though

joshgree88 5y ago

We have decreased ours and they have increased theirs but we are still buying more and more shit from them - their emissions are our emissions - while the demand side exists the supply will too - it will just be supplied from somewhere else...

mytailorisrich 5y ago

> China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita. That is just providing proof that we cannot eradicate poverty on the planet without destroying it in the process with 8 billion human beings. And this is just CO2 emissions but the issue is with consumption of resources in general: What is happening is simply that consumption of resources increases when people are lifted out of poverty (quite obviously since that's pretty much poverty means). The only sustainable way for human development is to bring global population down at the same time at global standard of living increases.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Not sure why you are being devoted. Having say, half our current population would have made this problem considerably easier. People do seem to cut back their baby making as they move from agricultural to industrial, it’s just a much slower process than we would prefer to help with this issue.
- gghhzzgghhzz 5y ago
  Would make little difference. Majority of consumption is coming from small percentage of the world's population. If everyone on the planet consumed at the rate of the top 1% we'd need 10s of earths. Plus it's also dog whistle. Who should decrease the population? Western white people? You are talking about communities subsistence farming with large families, and trying to reduce the size of those families through pushing them to industrialise. but what does it matter? those current families no matter how large, don't consume anything.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    > If everyone on the planet consumed at the rate of the top 1% we'd need 10s of earths. But that's exactly the point. Although it's a bit more than the top 1%, more like top 10-15%. What do you think eradicating poverty and global development means? Exactly that: A developed world means a world consuming the same as, say, Europeans do. This only works if population is reduced, even drastically reduced because, quite obviously, it does not work with 8+ billion people. > Who should decrease the population? Western white people? Who should remain dirt poor? Brown people? This is ridiculous. This is a global issue. Poverty should be eradicated globally, the global population should reduce. Do not make it a racial, if not racist, issue.

failuser 5y ago

I’m pretty sure Russia is still way below (50%) the 1990 levels though.

adolph 5y ago

China's population will age out soon enough and with that their emissions should reduce. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101677/population-distribution-by-detailed-age-group-in-china/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101677/population-distr...

keewee7 5y ago

Chinese rise in emissions is because of Western manufacturing. Russian rise in emissions is because of Western European need for heating. If we stop outsourcing manufacturing to China and stop buying gas from Russia their emissions will also fall. But India and Africa are significantly poorer than China and Russia. India and Africa should be allowed to emit CO2 for the next two decades or they will remain poor forever.

thehappypm 5y ago
Wait. Are you saying that Russian gas, combusted in the EU, counts towards Russia's CO2 output? that makes zero sense.
- keewee7 5y ago
  The natural gas industry in Russia emits a lot of CO2 by itself. Generally the fossil fuel industry is one of the largest emitters if CO2 by itself. That is why countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia are among the top CO2 emitters in the world.
hnmullany 5y ago
Chinese emissions are primarily because of a choice to exploit its thermal coal reserves for power generation instead of going nuclear. Probably was cheaper and faster to go that way - but it was definitely a choice.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  As far as I can tell from an American perspective, the US has always done what was cheapest and fastest, and we still do. I sure wouldn’t expect China to do anything different.
- liuliu 5y ago
  China only recently has a 3G reactor design that is 100% Chinese IP. The state-owned enterprise that handles nuclear reactor construction is on the U.S. entity list.

Iwan-Zotow 5y ago

> mainly China, India and Russia. nope, not Russia Russia is one of the few countries building nuclear. "A share of nuclear power plants (branches of Rosenergoatom Concern, part of ROSATOM’s Electric Power Division) in the energy mix of Russia was 20.28% in 2020. In 2019, this indicator was 19.04%." "CO2 emissions decreased by -2.13% over the previous year (2015), representing a decrease by -36,108,200 tons over 2015, when CO2 emissions were 1,698,007,500 tons. CO2 emissions per capita in the Russian Federation are equivalent to 11.44 tons per person (based on a population of 145,275,383 in 2016), a decrease by -0.27% over the figure of 11.71 CO2 tons per person registered in 2015; this represents a change of -2.3% in CO2 emissions per capita."

keewee7 5y ago

Blaming China and India is the typical Republican talking point about climate change. There is a reason Noam Chomsky has called the Republican party the most dangerous organization in the world because of how they promote Western inaction on climate change.

robinsoh 5y ago

> Believe it or not, western countries have reduced carbon emissions over the last ~15 years, in both absolute and per capita terms (despite a growing population). The only countries that are growing their carbon emissions are developing countries; mainly China, India and Russia. USA: 15.50 metric tons (2016) India: 1.82 metric tons (2016) Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... One American is emitting 15 Indians worth of carbon emissions. In terms of your claim that "western countries have reduced carbon emissions" it is important to realize that increasingly developed countries have been outsourcing most of their high polluting industries. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/15331040/emissions-outsourcing-carbon-leakage https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/1533104... "During the early 2000s, these “emissions transfers” were growing at a stunning pace, nearly 11 percent per year, as more and more Western manufacturing was shifting to Asia. Factories making computers, electronics, apparel, and furniture would close in the US, open up in China, and then ship their products back home to the US. Americans got the goods; China got the pollution (and the jobs)."

mattlondon 5y ago
> One American is emitting 15 Indians worth of carbon emissions. 15.5 / 1.82 = 8.5 So more like One American is emitting 9 Indian's worth of carbon emissions. Still a lot though.
- gandalf013 5y ago
  India's population is approximately 4.5 times that of USA, so the actual ratio is "one American is emitting 35 Indians worth of carbon emissions".
  - rhaps0dy 5y ago
    These numbers are already per capita, so the population difference is already accounted for. So one USian emits as much as 9 Indians. Which is still a lot.
- 5y ago

Haga 5y ago

China is good at pretending to be good at collective action.

kergonath 5y ago

> China is particularly troubling since they make up 28% of all emissions (US is 15%) and they have both a growing population and growing emissions per capita. You seem to have discovered that the lifestyle of western countries is unsustainable (and the US is particularly bad). It does not make it China's fault.

Pokepokalypse 5y ago

believe it or not, this is a WHOLE WORLD problem. A "western country" can not "conveniently" cut their carbon emissions, and still buy shit manufactured overseas, and pretend everything is hunkey-dorey.