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China, India, and Africa ‘way off track’ from climate goal FTFY

lbrito 3y ago
USA, largest per capita contributor to global warming, for over a century responsible for emitting more CO2 than the rest of the planet combined, can't stand poor countries trying to be less poor. Stay poor please, and don't mention the past 100 years' data. FTFY
- beezlewax 3y ago
  Not to mention importing and consuming all those products direct from china
- noworld 3y ago
  Yes, but that's history. This is about the future. You want to have your cake and eat it too. If you want the 3rd world to industrialize, welcome to missing your climate goals.
tzs 3y ago
India emits half the CO2 that the US does, and 1/8th the per capita amount that the US does. China emits twice the CO2 as the US, but 1/2 the per capita amount. So they are both doing better than the US if you use per capita. Even if you use the nonsensical per country measure India is doing better than the US. Per country is nonsensical because the atmosphere and climate do not care about arbitrary human boundaries. If you go per country, then even if we set the goal as merely holding emissions to the current levels the US would have to cut its per capita emissions down to the level of Bangladesh or Nigeria to get on track. Alternatively, to get on track without cutting how much CO2 each person uses, the US would have to cut its population to about 11 million. Alternatively, the US could split up with each state becoming a separate country. The more populous states like California or Texas would then only have to cut their per capita to around Switzerland or Portugal levels to be on track. Or cut their populations to around 8 or 9 million without cutting per capita emissions. Under per country, the EU's fair share of the world's CO2 budget would be 27 times that of the US, because they are 27 separate countries. The logical endpoint of divvying up the CO2 budget per country is for high per capita emitters to split, and the newly formed countries to make treaties with each other to form EU-like structures to minimize the disruption of the splits. But notice that each time a country splits, it lowers the CO2 budget of each existing country. After the biggest per capita emitters split enough it will bring other countries that were once under budget over. Then they split, and so on. This converges to per capita. So we should just skip the per country nonsense and budget based on per capita without actually requiring every freaking country to split into dozens of tiny countries first.

USA, largest per capita contributor to global warming, for over a century responsible for emitting more CO2 than the rest of the planet combined, can't stand poor countries trying to be less poor. Stay poor please, and don't mention the past 100 years' data. FTFY

beezlewax 3y ago
Not to mention importing and consuming all those products direct from china
noworld 3y ago
Yes, but that's history. This is about the future. You want to have your cake and eat it too. If you want the 3rd world to industrialize, welcome to missing your climate goals.

tzs 3y ago

India emits half the CO2 that the US does, and 1/8th the per capita amount that the US does. China emits twice the CO2 as the US, but 1/2 the per capita amount. So they are both doing better than the US if you use per capita. Even if you use the nonsensical per country measure India is doing better than the US. Per country is nonsensical because the atmosphere and climate do not care about arbitrary human boundaries. If you go per country, then even if we set the goal as merely holding emissions to the current levels the US would have to cut its per capita emissions down to the level of Bangladesh or Nigeria to get on track. Alternatively, to get on track without cutting how much CO2 each person uses, the US would have to cut its population to about 11 million. Alternatively, the US could split up with each state becoming a separate country. The more populous states like California or Texas would then only have to cut their per capita to around Switzerland or Portugal levels to be on track. Or cut their populations to around 8 or 9 million without cutting per capita emissions. Under per country, the EU's fair share of the world's CO2 budget would be 27 times that of the US, because they are 27 separate countries. The logical endpoint of divvying up the CO2 budget per country is for high per capita emitters to split, and the newly formed countries to make treaties with each other to form EU-like structures to minimize the disruption of the splits. But notice that each time a country splits, it lowers the CO2 budget of each existing country. After the biggest per capita emitters split enough it will bring other countries that were once under budget over. Then they split, and so on. This converges to per capita. So we should just skip the per country nonsense and budget based on per capita without actually requiring every freaking country to split into dozens of tiny countries first.