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This is the kind of thing I point people to when their argument is 'China's opening x number of coal stations up per year'. In the UK, our own country overshoo

This is the kind of thing I point people to when their argument is 'China's opening x number of coal stations up per year'. In the UK, our own country overshoot per capita is still a good bit above the world average. Also worth considering historical emissions (and on top of that, the benefits that have came from the work outcome from them leading us til the present situation). As much as emerging countries can 'blame' industrialised countries, surely worth noting that our current technological mitigations are also based on those past emissions.

Avalaxy 3y ago
It seems to be mostly united statians pointing at China. But in this graph we clearly see that the US reaches their overshoot day twice as fast as China.
- ricardo81 3y ago
  Indeed, North America per capita consume a lot more energy than most nations.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Not to mention that we outsource a lot of our impact to supplier countries (China and others).
    - ricardo81 3y ago
      True, and while the UK's emissions per capita has dropped a fair bit since 1990, it's very hard to tell how much of that has been outsourced. Put another way, it's actually quite difficult to measure your own carbon/resource footprint.
      - abyssin 3y ago
        My rule of thumb is based on how much money one spends. My reasoning is as follows: it isn't too far off to say our economy is based on fossil fuels. Spending money is taking part in this economy. How much one takes part in that economy tells how much one is responsible for the pollution it creates. What about people who spend money of organic, fair trade goods, etc.? In the end, that money will be spent by others on goods of the traditional economy. I'm not too sure about the second part, so criticisms are welcome.
        chmod600 3y ago
        A good first approximation, surely. Money is a good proxy for consumption. Not true for leasing a fancy apartment, though, so you'll want to adjust it. The idea that money you spend then gets spent by someone else on consumption and that you caused that is a little too hand-wavy for me. But I do suspect that a lot of the politically-correct consumption is not as great as it seems when you look deeper.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        ricardo81 3y ago
        Agree in this approximation. In an ideal world, monetary value would be more closely aligned with energy consumption and in turn aligned with productivity, where productivity is less aligned with monetary value and more aligned with the sunk energy cost.
        RetroTechie 3y ago
        That's only a starting point. Money spent = a kind of 'cost' function, with 'cost' representing raw materials, energy etc used to produce something. Higher cost = more resources used / more damage to environment. But that's only accurate if all costs (including environmental) are somehow accounted for in market price(s). That is rarely the case. Apart from the difficulty of assigning $$ values to things like tropical forest cut down, mountain top removed to get copper ore, water used & polluted, or what have you. Also it doesn't include social costs. If product is cheap but someone's health suffered, or profit helped dictator to reduce press freedom in producing country, is product still cheap? Too many unknowns & externalities - $$ spent is a poor indicator.
- throwbadubadu 3y ago
  Yep. It is right that Chinas CO2 output has been rising lately quite much with its huge population going to western standards, but tbh, actually China is currently doing more in cutting those emissions than all of the West combined. Our fingerpointing is just stupid lazyness, and soon we will be the ones being pointed with the finger at.. even more. Just read that great summary e.g.: https://nitter.net/KyleTrainEmoji/status/1680246994072133632#m https://nitter.net/KyleTrainEmoji/status/1680246994072133632... "China is the ONLY country in the world that both has enough resources to make a real difference AND is actually treating the climate emergency like it’s an emergency" (Still so many posts will likely come and say here how bad China is and how it is all worthless because of them.. just to excuse our non-action).
- bartimus 3y ago
  It doesn't make sense to compare countries on a per capita basis. China has the bigger emission deficit. Therefore China should have the earlier overshoot date. It doesn't matter how many people live there.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
grotorea 3y ago
But is China opening those coal stations to power factories that export things to the developed world or to power internal demand? Should the pollution of a product get counted in the producing or the consuming country?
- Spivak 3y ago
  Producing. Always. Assign the "blame" however you want but the only person who can stop polluting is the person actually doing the polluting. "Look what you made me do" has never been a valid justification for anything.
- IMTDb 3y ago
  Consuming. Always. Assign the "blame" however you want but the only person who can stop polluting is the person actually asking for the polluting to be done. "I turn a blind eye to the consequences of my needs/desires" has never been a valid justification for anything.
  - carlitossway 3y ago
    wish you'd have expressed this better. Your argument is sound but your sarcasm gave a pretext to those not wanting to hear. Now you are dismissed out of hand on shallow grounds.
    - IMTDb 3y ago
      I actually don't have strong arguments in favour of what I wrote. My personal point is that it's a complex subject. And you should not deal absolute in such complex subjects. Having two completely different point of view expressed almost exactly the same ways brings balance to the discussion and leaves the reader with the decision of who is "right" or "wrong". And hopefully will answer "neither". Which is the ultimate goal.
- JamesBarney 3y ago
  If you look at consumption vs production co2 emissions statistics they're pretty close. Manufacturing isn't a huge portion of emissions, and we export a lot of goods to China as well.
rayiner 3y ago
Then you’re talking past the people you’re responding to. This visualization bakes in an assumption about how environmental resources/footprint should be distributed amongst the world’s population. But the climate obviously does not care about per-capita figures. China emits 10 billion tons of CO2 annually, compared to the UK’s 358 million. That means whatever the UK does just matters very little to the overall problem of mitigating climate change. In fact, China’s emissions have grown from 1.9 tons per person to 7.6 over the past 30 years. China is actually higher per capita now than the UK, which is at just 5.2 tons. More importantly, those billions of other people in the rest of Asia and Africa want to do the same thing China did. They want a western standard of living and that means western levels of energy use. That means the actual climate change problem isn’t getting people in the UK to use less. It’s figuring out how to accommodate western standards of living in Asia and Africa without a massive increase in CO2 emissions.
- Someone 3y ago
  > China emits 10 billion tons of CO2 annually, compared to the UK’s 358 million. That means whatever the UK does just matters very little to the overall problem of mitigating climate change. I don’t think it follows from that that “the actual climate change problem isn’t getting people in the UK to use less“. China has 31 provinces, so if you look at China’s emissions by province, there will be quite a few that are at the level of CO2 emissions of the UK or below it. By your logic, that would mean the actual climate change problem isn’t getting people in those provinces to use less. If so, who has to do something? > It’s figuring out how to accommodate western standards of living in Asia and Africa without a massive increase in CO2 emissions. If we can do that, we can cut the UK’s emissions, too. I also think it’s not about ‘raising’ the world to what the west currently does, but about changing western standards of living. I think there’s substantial room for decreasing CO2 emissions without decreasing well-being (thought experiment: would people be less happy if the airplane hadn’t been invented? If we had run out of oil in 1980?)
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    What does a 1980 without oil look like in your imagination?
vondur 3y ago
Well, the climate doesn't really know how much pollution per/person is being emitted, it's all about the aggregate.

Avalaxy 3y ago

It seems to be mostly united statians pointing at China. But in this graph we clearly see that the US reaches their overshoot day twice as fast as China.

ricardo81 3y ago
Indeed, North America per capita consume a lot more energy than most nations.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Not to mention that we outsource a lot of our impact to supplier countries (China and others).
  - ricardo81 3y ago
    True, and while the UK's emissions per capita has dropped a fair bit since 1990, it's very hard to tell how much of that has been outsourced. Put another way, it's actually quite difficult to measure your own carbon/resource footprint.
    - abyssin 3y ago
      My rule of thumb is based on how much money one spends. My reasoning is as follows: it isn't too far off to say our economy is based on fossil fuels. Spending money is taking part in this economy. How much one takes part in that economy tells how much one is responsible for the pollution it creates. What about people who spend money of organic, fair trade goods, etc.? In the end, that money will be spent by others on goods of the traditional economy. I'm not too sure about the second part, so criticisms are welcome.
      - chmod600 3y ago
        A good first approximation, surely. Money is a good proxy for consumption. Not true for leasing a fancy apartment, though, so you'll want to adjust it. The idea that money you spend then gets spent by someone else on consumption and that you caused that is a little too hand-wavy for me. But I do suspect that a lot of the politically-correct consumption is not as great as it seems when you look deeper.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - ricardo81 3y ago
        Agree in this approximation. In an ideal world, monetary value would be more closely aligned with energy consumption and in turn aligned with productivity, where productivity is less aligned with monetary value and more aligned with the sunk energy cost.
      - RetroTechie 3y ago
        That's only a starting point. Money spent = a kind of 'cost' function, with 'cost' representing raw materials, energy etc used to produce something. Higher cost = more resources used / more damage to environment. But that's only accurate if all costs (including environmental) are somehow accounted for in market price(s). That is rarely the case. Apart from the difficulty of assigning $$ values to things like tropical forest cut down, mountain top removed to get copper ore, water used & polluted, or what have you. Also it doesn't include social costs. If product is cheap but someone's health suffered, or profit helped dictator to reduce press freedom in producing country, is product still cheap? Too many unknowns & externalities - $$ spent is a poor indicator.
throwbadubadu 3y ago
Yep. It is right that Chinas CO2 output has been rising lately quite much with its huge population going to western standards, but tbh, actually China is currently doing more in cutting those emissions than all of the West combined. Our fingerpointing is just stupid lazyness, and soon we will be the ones being pointed with the finger at.. even more. Just read that great summary e.g.: https://nitter.net/KyleTrainEmoji/status/1680246994072133632#m https://nitter.net/KyleTrainEmoji/status/1680246994072133632... "China is the ONLY country in the world that both has enough resources to make a real difference AND is actually treating the climate emergency like it’s an emergency" (Still so many posts will likely come and say here how bad China is and how it is all worthless because of them.. just to excuse our non-action).
bartimus 3y ago
It doesn't make sense to compare countries on a per capita basis. China has the bigger emission deficit. Therefore China should have the earlier overshoot date. It doesn't matter how many people live there.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

grotorea 3y ago

But is China opening those coal stations to power factories that export things to the developed world or to power internal demand? Should the pollution of a product get counted in the producing or the consuming country?

Spivak 3y ago
Producing. Always. Assign the "blame" however you want but the only person who can stop polluting is the person actually doing the polluting. "Look what you made me do" has never been a valid justification for anything.
IMTDb 3y ago
Consuming. Always. Assign the "blame" however you want but the only person who can stop polluting is the person actually asking for the polluting to be done. "I turn a blind eye to the consequences of my needs/desires" has never been a valid justification for anything.
- carlitossway 3y ago
  wish you'd have expressed this better. Your argument is sound but your sarcasm gave a pretext to those not wanting to hear. Now you are dismissed out of hand on shallow grounds.
  - IMTDb 3y ago
    I actually don't have strong arguments in favour of what I wrote. My personal point is that it's a complex subject. And you should not deal absolute in such complex subjects. Having two completely different point of view expressed almost exactly the same ways brings balance to the discussion and leaves the reader with the decision of who is "right" or "wrong". And hopefully will answer "neither". Which is the ultimate goal.
JamesBarney 3y ago
If you look at consumption vs production co2 emissions statistics they're pretty close. Manufacturing isn't a huge portion of emissions, and we export a lot of goods to China as well.

rayiner 3y ago

Then you’re talking past the people you’re responding to. This visualization bakes in an assumption about how environmental resources/footprint should be distributed amongst the world’s population. But the climate obviously does not care about per-capita figures. China emits 10 billion tons of CO2 annually, compared to the UK’s 358 million. That means whatever the UK does just matters very little to the overall problem of mitigating climate change. In fact, China’s emissions have grown from 1.9 tons per person to 7.6 over the past 30 years. China is actually higher per capita now than the UK, which is at just 5.2 tons. More importantly, those billions of other people in the rest of Asia and Africa want to do the same thing China did. They want a western standard of living and that means western levels of energy use. That means the actual climate change problem isn’t getting people in the UK to use less. It’s figuring out how to accommodate western standards of living in Asia and Africa without a massive increase in CO2 emissions.

Someone 3y ago
> China emits 10 billion tons of CO2 annually, compared to the UK’s 358 million. That means whatever the UK does just matters very little to the overall problem of mitigating climate change. I don’t think it follows from that that “the actual climate change problem isn’t getting people in the UK to use less“. China has 31 provinces, so if you look at China’s emissions by province, there will be quite a few that are at the level of CO2 emissions of the UK or below it. By your logic, that would mean the actual climate change problem isn’t getting people in those provinces to use less. If so, who has to do something? > It’s figuring out how to accommodate western standards of living in Asia and Africa without a massive increase in CO2 emissions. If we can do that, we can cut the UK’s emissions, too. I also think it’s not about ‘raising’ the world to what the west currently does, but about changing western standards of living. I think there’s substantial room for decreasing CO2 emissions without decreasing well-being (thought experiment: would people be less happy if the airplane hadn’t been invented? If we had run out of oil in 1980?)
- throwuwu 3y ago
  What does a 1980 without oil look like in your imagination?

vondur 3y ago

Well, the climate doesn't really know how much pollution per/person is being emitted, it's all about the aggregate.