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> More than triple the CO2 emissions as they had in 2000 and the number continues to go up over time rather than down. Yeah they shot up for a decade after 200

> More than triple the CO2 emissions as they had in 2000 and the number continues to go up over time rather than down. Yeah they shot up for a decade after 2000, while the US/Canada reduced theirs and yet they're still 2x higher per capita. The area under the graph is the real contribution to the problem. China is very far from the obvious target for any objective evalution: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
The area under the graph is a sunk cost. What matters is the decisions being made today, not the things nobody can change anymore. US CO2 emissions per capita were higher in 1950 than they are in China today -- and in the US today -- because in 1950 there were no nuclear power plants and renewables weren't a viable technology yet. That isn't true anymore. Which is why the US is replacing coal with renewables and gets three times as high a percentage than China from nuclear and its emissions per capita are trending lower. But that's harder to do than building them to begin with, because to do that you have to be competitive with a fossil fuel power plant that already exists rather than one that needs new capital in order to be built. And yet it's still happening. There is no excuse for building new coal in the 21st century. They can't say that nuclear and renewables don't exist or aren't viable yet. They can't say that they're existing plants and they need time to transition. They shouldn't be doing it.