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Claims that China is the world’s biggest polluter ignore the fact that so much of the rest of the world has outsourced their manufacturing to China. Those emiss

Claims that China is the world’s biggest polluter ignore the fact that so much of the rest of the world has outsourced their manufacturing to China. Those emissions mostly aren’t going towards bettering the lives of Chinese people, they’re for producing the stuff we buy. In the same vein, a lot of the clean air improvements in the US can be attributed to moving those factories to China. Chinese people are dying early from air pollution to make stuff for us. People in Pittsburgh used to bring two shirts to work because it was so polluted. Not anymore. “Convincing China to stop expanding their emissions” is akin to stopping consuming manufactured goods. Americans are also far more prolific polluters than Chinese at an individual level. Due to poor urban design endemic to North American cities, most travel involves cars and airplanes, some of the worst conceivable means of transportation from an environmental perspective. This isn’t to say China is blameless. They’ve definitely made some choices favoring expediency over sustainability. But it seems a bit rich to shift blame to China and other poorer nations now when CO2-driven climate change was a problem Carl Sagan warned Congress about in the 80s (and he was ignored).

jcranmer 3y ago
> Claims that China is the world’s biggest polluter ignore the fact that so much of the rest of the world has outsourced their manufacturing to China. Those emissions mostly aren’t going towards bettering the lives of Chinese people, they’re for producing the stuff we buy. China still leads in total consumption-based emissions. On a per-capita consumption-based emission, China is not far off the EU average. For hard numbers, CO2 emissions for export represent roughly 8% of China's total emission as of 2021. Considering that China emits twice as much CO2 as the next largest emitter (as measured by production), it shouldn't be hard to see why consumption-based emissions don't change the picture all that much. [Numbers come from https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions].
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Not sure where you got the Chinese 8% number, that seems to be the percent for USA imports on that page. For Chinese exports, the number is almost twice as much (14%). That means at a per-capita level if you account for manufacturing the average Chinese person emits 0.86x10.1=8.7 tons of CO2 while the average American emits 17.6x1.08=19 tons. Thus the American lifestyle causes 2.2x the pollution of the Chinese lifestyle. However, based on that article it seems the US has also decreased emissions even when adjusted for imports. It is still higher that almost everywhere else but offshoring isn’t the only cause of the decline.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > Not sure where you got the Chinese 8% number, that seems to be the percent for USA imports on that page. Hover over China on the nearby map. The text is written with numbers from ~2016, but the map has more up-to-date numbers.

jcranmer 3y ago

> Claims that China is the world’s biggest polluter ignore the fact that so much of the rest of the world has outsourced their manufacturing to China. Those emissions mostly aren’t going towards bettering the lives of Chinese people, they’re for producing the stuff we buy. China still leads in total consumption-based emissions. On a per-capita consumption-based emission, China is not far off the EU average. For hard numbers, CO2 emissions for export represent roughly 8% of China's total emission as of 2021. Considering that China emits twice as much CO2 as the next largest emitter (as measured by production), it shouldn't be hard to see why consumption-based emissions don't change the picture all that much. [Numbers come from https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions].

janalsncm 3y ago
Not sure where you got the Chinese 8% number, that seems to be the percent for USA imports on that page. For Chinese exports, the number is almost twice as much (14%). That means at a per-capita level if you account for manufacturing the average Chinese person emits 0.86x10.1=8.7 tons of CO2 while the average American emits 17.6x1.08=19 tons. Thus the American lifestyle causes 2.2x the pollution of the Chinese lifestyle. However, based on that article it seems the US has also decreased emissions even when adjusted for imports. It is still higher that almost everywhere else but offshoring isn’t the only cause of the decline.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > Not sure where you got the Chinese 8% number, that seems to be the percent for USA imports on that page. Hover over China on the nearby map. The text is written with numbers from ~2016, but the map has more up-to-date numbers.