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> Short of China and India voluntarily holding themselves to the same standards as Western Europe and the US China and India emit significantly less CO2 per ca

> Short of China and India voluntarily holding themselves to the same standards as Western Europe and the US China and India emit significantly less CO2 per capita than Western Europe and the US [0] - and that's ignoring the fact they do all of our manufacturing. [0] https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

gjsman-1000 2y ago
Per capita is misleading. China has over 1 billion people more than the US, the majority of them in abject poverty. Same for India; so their per capita number is artificially skewed downward.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  Why is that misleading? That doesn't sound like "artificial skew" to me.
  - 486sx33 2y ago
    Irresponsibly growing your population doesn’t allow you more emissions, that’s crap!
    - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
      Not sure if your answer is intended to be serious or sarcastic. But there is a justifiable argument for it -- you have new humans to take care of, who have needs, and the same moral claim as anyone else in the world nto address those needs using fossil fuels. On the other hand, there's no reason to think that an increase in the number of countries is a valid excuse to increase emissions.
      - card_zero 2y ago
        Leading to the conclusion: those few people (government) who have the greatest influence over the problem (over the countries with the largest emissions in real terms, not per person) somehow don't have the responsibility. It's true that if a country splits into two countries, that doesn't give them a right to emit more collectively. However, it does mean that each country now has little control over what the other one does, and less ability to actually solve the collective problem we want solving, which was the objective here.
        h0l0cube 2y ago
        > in real terms I’m not sure how better to dice up emissions then by consumption per person, and by that measure the US is clearly emitting the most https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit... Conversely China is doing the most about emissions > China commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022, while its wind additions also grew by 66% year-on-year. https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summar...
        card_zero 2y ago
        It's great if China is genuinely going renewable. I read about this often. But I also read that they're the biggest producers of coal (confusingly both the biggest importers and exporters, and consumers). Still, maybe that's being phased out. But why do you want to "slice up" emissions at all, if you're interested in reducing them? The problem is a big load of gas. So identify the biggest emitters (in total volume) with the most control over it. Don't say "oh San Marino, you're a really greedy country, with all your tax haven shenanigans and conspicuous consumption and more cars than people, you're the problem", because they really aren't. They may be really awful, but that wasn't the question and isn't something it's viable to fix, nor are they capable of helping more than minutely, unlike a giant authoritarian state with giant emissions, capable of helping a lot. And perhaps, as you point out, already doing so.
        2y ago
    - h0l0cube 2y ago
      China’s population has reached a plateau https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN~IND~USA~IDN~PAK&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=None https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demograp...
      - downrightmike 2y ago
        ...because they killed millions of girls...
        h0l0cube 2y ago
        Who is 'they' here? Certainly there was a one-child policy. I don't think it could be said that the consequence of female abortion and infanticide was the intention (or even an expected consequence) of the policy. It seems that many people in the comments are set on demonizing the country. For this I think better points to raise are the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghur 'reeducation' program, or the usurping of peaceful autonomous neighbors like Tibet and Hong Kong (maybe Taiwan later). But none of this has anything to do with obligations around CO2 emissions, which they are addressing more than any country on the planet, as I've commented elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41012774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41012774
    - defrost 2y ago
      Which county, China or the USofA, had an enforced one child per couple policy for many decades?
- ianburrell 2y ago
  Are you a time traveler from 1990? China effectively doesn't have anyone in extreme poverty ($1.50/day). They have about the same or lower rate than the US. They do have people in poverty, 24% below $5.50/day ($2000/yr) line. India has also decreased extreme poverty, down to 2% in 2023. At $3.20/day, they declined to 21%. At $5.50, they are at 81%. Most people are poor, but less poor than they were.
486sx33 2y ago
[flagged]
- OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
  More people live in China and India. Their government is doing a better job at keeping emissions down, per person. Pollution doesn't care where you live.
  - downrightmike 2y ago
    According to a 2016 study, electricity theft and fraud in India can account for almost 20% of the country's total electricity generation. Other sources have reported that the percentage of lost electricity due to theft can range from 20% to 50%. Electricity theft can be a result of poor governance, and power distribution companies (discoms) that are already in debt can face significant losses. Some say that the government needs to promote better governance in the sector to help manage the issue. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421516300878#:~:text=More%20than%2020%%20of%20the%20electricity%20generated,over%20a%20time%20span%20of%20five%20years https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
    - Qwertious 2y ago
      So tl;dr the Indian govt should be less corrupt. I think phasing out their coal plants would be a far easier and more realistic task to tackle.
- netsharc 2y ago
  And will you be happy if iPhones and Walmart toys cost, let's say 30% more, because of China mandating CO2 emissions compensation? (Although such a compensation is mostly mythical). Or that the shelves of Walmart are bare ("Sorry we can only produce 10% of what we're able to, emission caps"), and prices are sky-high because of the law of supply and demand? I bet you'll be moaning then too.
  - 2y ago
wmanley 2y ago
Yes to India and the USA. China and Europe are roughly on par.
bcrosby95 2y ago
[flagged]
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions. Not sure what else you expect them to do > Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. [..] In 2023, China commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022, while its wind additions also grew by 66% year-on-year. Globally, solar PV alone accounted for three-quarters of renewable capacity additions worldwide. https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summar...
- energy123 2y ago
  China has emitted much less in absolute since the industrial revolution, less per capita today, they're poor, they're rapidly building out renewables faster than anyone, they're powering the world's transition to renewables with the cheapest solar panels and batteries, they're expected to hit their coal peak in the next two years, Xi has made it a publicly stated policy priority recently to decarbonise their economy, and they're the world's manufacturer which means their economy has to play on hard mode relative to a service economy like the US. It's wrong to point the finger at them as some kind of uniquely bad actor. Yes they have to decarbonise, but so does everyone at at the same time, and this bad faith argument keeps being resurrected as an excuse to do nothing at home.
magicalhippo 2y ago
> and that's ignoring the fact they do all of our manufacturing. Any estimate of how much that constitutes? Like if US and EU had to produce themselves all the stuff they now get from China, how would their CO2 emissions change?
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  Emissions embedded in trade https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-trade?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra... Trade adjusted emissions per capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
- thinkcontext 2y ago
  Those numbers are from 2016. Numbers from 2022 have China ahead of the EU with them heading in the opposite direction. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?tab=chart&country=CHN~IND~OWID_WRL~USA~OWID_EU27~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?...
  - h0l0cube 2y ago
    Not sure who you're replying to, but when you factor in trade, China is still a touch behind the EU and seems to be trending away. I see 2022 on the chart (you might have to make sure you have JS enabled) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
anonym29 2y ago
They collectively still emit substantially more than the US and Western Europe, and much more importantly, GHG emissions have been declining in the US and Western Europe for over two decades. In that same time period, they have done nothing but grow rapidly in China and India. All the information we have so far suggests that India will continue to grow rapidly in this regard even after China plateaus on carbon emissions. We can play semantic games with per-capita consumption, but the fact of the matter remains that even if the entirety of the planet, except China and India, went 100% carbon neutral overnight, it would still be impossible to avoid hitting catastrophic climate change thresholds due to GHG emissions from those two countries alone. They are both countries home to a rapidly rising broad middle class, and that middle class is going to want to enjoy the spoils of materialistic consumerism (the true root cause of human-induced climate change) just as much as our grandparents did, our parents did, and we do.
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  > We can play semantic games with per-capita consumption, but the fact of the matter remains that even if the entirety of the planet, except China and India, went 100% carbon neutral overnight, it would still be impossible to avoid hitting catastrophic climate change thresholds due to GHG emissions from those two countries alone. Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions. > Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. [..] In 2023, China commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022, while its wind additions also grew by 66% year-on-year. Globally, solar PV alone accounted for three-quarters of renewable capacity additions worldwide. https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summar... The western world is shifting away from China to India and the rest of Asia for manufacturing, so I think the desire for cheaper products and ‘national security’ are going to increase emissions somewhat. But even still, with the glut of renewables, and soon the glut of batteries, emissions free energy is going to be the cheapest option for manufacturing anyway
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    > Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions. False. They have good green PR to justify other governments funneling taxpayer money via subsidies but meanwhile they are building the most coal plants than any country and this has been only ramping up in recent years with more new fossil fuel power plants being approved year on year. https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-coal-power-construction-in-2023-report-says/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-...
glenstein 2y ago
>China and India emit significantly less CO2 per capita Which would be great if CO2's heat trapping properties depended on the per capita emissions of their nation of origin. Unfortunately CO2 molecules don't know where they came from and can't adjust their heat trapping properties accordingly, and instead it's about absolute amounts as ppm of the atmosphere. But there's a silver lining for China and India - which is that even small reductions in their per capita emissions cash out as massive reductions in absolute terms. So in terms of bang for the buck per-capita wise, they are the top candidates for emissions savings.
- geysersam 2y ago
  Just no. In terms of bang for buck it's easier to reduce emissions in rich countries with high emissions per capita. Unless by "buck" you mean the number of decisions that need to be made, but that's hardly the limiting factor. Country sizes are arbitrary. With your logic if China was to split into a bunch of smaller nations their emissions wouldn't matter any more? Per-capita emissions is the only reasonable way to measure.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - deleted 2y ago
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  - HPsquared 2y ago
    It costs more bucks to change a rich person's mind, than a poor person's mind.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    If the Earth's population was 1 billion, 10 billion, or 100 billion, but the emissions were the same, in each of those cases we would be cooked to death by our own atmosphere. Even though they have wildly different per capita emissions. Or to put it a different way, if all I knew were the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, and all you knew were per capita consumption figures, I would know when the atmosphere was truly cooked and you wouldn't.
downrightmike 2y ago
Per capita doesn't mean shit when their actual gross is way higher.
- Qwertious 2y ago
  Per capita is a proxy for discussing how much emissions they need. If you're not considering anyone's need, then you're basically telling them to go kill themselves and they'll likewise completely ignore anything you have to say. If we ignore China's/India's needs and what they actually can do while talking about what they should do, then the whole discussion is a waste of time.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Agreed. Per capita arguments sound like toddlers arguing over who is closer to the other.
throwaway290 2y ago
China emits more per capita than EU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?tab=chart&country=CHN~IND~OWID_WRL~USA~OWID_EU27~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?....
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  Not when you adjust for trade: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    Why do you discount export emissions? Is it forced on them against their will or they don't profit from it? Shall we also adjust for things like how much of their emissions could have been green, etc?
    - netsharc 2y ago
      I'm not the same commenter as above, but, why not? In the extreme hypothetical scenario, a country could be net-zero and have the newest iPhone every year, throw away their good PCs because Windows 11 needs a modern one with TPM 2.0, fast fashion, and steak for dinner every night, because everything's produced in the neighboring country. And then when the world says "We need to be better about our carbon output", your argument is like the country of Netzeroland saying "Well don't blame me, I'm net zero on CO2, blame Neighboristan over there! I don't need to change, they need to change!", when in fact its people also need to change their consumption habits. Whether it's forced, it seems like a philosophical question about economics. Do you go to work willingly, or because you're forced to, because you want to be able to afford food, housing, and iPhone 17? Or it's a tragedy of the commons scenario. If there's demand, and Neighboristan is able to but doesn't supply it, their citizens are forced by government to give up sources of income; meanwhile the citizens of We-Also-Build-iPhones-And-Make-Cheap-Shirts-ia are raking the money in and travelling around the world and taking selfies of their steak meals with their iPhones, and citizens of Neighboristan will get jealous and think "Why can't we do that?". And they'll either vote in a government that will allow this, or revolt. And consumers in the West enable this behavior by wanting the cheapest bang for the buck. If China charges for CO2, your cheap Walmart toy gets more expensive, and you don't buy it, Walmart will say "we'll find a supplier in Vietnam/India/etc where there's no such CO2 fees."...

gjsman-1000 2y ago

Per capita is misleading. China has over 1 billion people more than the US, the majority of them in abject poverty. Same for India; so their per capita number is artificially skewed downward.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
Why is that misleading? That doesn't sound like "artificial skew" to me.
- 486sx33 2y ago
  Irresponsibly growing your population doesn’t allow you more emissions, that’s crap!
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    Not sure if your answer is intended to be serious or sarcastic. But there is a justifiable argument for it -- you have new humans to take care of, who have needs, and the same moral claim as anyone else in the world nto address those needs using fossil fuels. On the other hand, there's no reason to think that an increase in the number of countries is a valid excuse to increase emissions.
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Leading to the conclusion: those few people (government) who have the greatest influence over the problem (over the countries with the largest emissions in real terms, not per person) somehow don't have the responsibility. It's true that if a country splits into two countries, that doesn't give them a right to emit more collectively. However, it does mean that each country now has little control over what the other one does, and less ability to actually solve the collective problem we want solving, which was the objective here.
      - h0l0cube 2y ago
        > in real terms I’m not sure how better to dice up emissions then by consumption per person, and by that measure the US is clearly emitting the most https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit... Conversely China is doing the most about emissions > China commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022, while its wind additions also grew by 66% year-on-year. https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summar...
        card_zero 2y ago
        It's great if China is genuinely going renewable. I read about this often. But I also read that they're the biggest producers of coal (confusingly both the biggest importers and exporters, and consumers). Still, maybe that's being phased out. But why do you want to "slice up" emissions at all, if you're interested in reducing them? The problem is a big load of gas. So identify the biggest emitters (in total volume) with the most control over it. Don't say "oh San Marino, you're a really greedy country, with all your tax haven shenanigans and conspicuous consumption and more cars than people, you're the problem", because they really aren't. They may be really awful, but that wasn't the question and isn't something it's viable to fix, nor are they capable of helping more than minutely, unlike a giant authoritarian state with giant emissions, capable of helping a lot. And perhaps, as you point out, already doing so.
        2y ago
  - h0l0cube 2y ago
    China’s population has reached a plateau https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demography?facet=none&country=CHN~IND~USA~IDN~PAK&hideControls=false&Metric=Population&Sex=Both+sexes&Age+group=Total&Projection+Scenario=None https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/population-and-demograp...
    - downrightmike 2y ago
      ...because they killed millions of girls...
      - h0l0cube 2y ago
        Who is 'they' here? Certainly there was a one-child policy. I don't think it could be said that the consequence of female abortion and infanticide was the intention (or even an expected consequence) of the policy. It seems that many people in the comments are set on demonizing the country. For this I think better points to raise are the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghur 'reeducation' program, or the usurping of peaceful autonomous neighbors like Tibet and Hong Kong (maybe Taiwan later). But none of this has anything to do with obligations around CO2 emissions, which they are addressing more than any country on the planet, as I've commented elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41012774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41012774
  - defrost 2y ago
    Which county, China or the USofA, had an enforced one child per couple policy for many decades?
ianburrell 2y ago
Are you a time traveler from 1990? China effectively doesn't have anyone in extreme poverty ($1.50/day). They have about the same or lower rate than the US. They do have people in poverty, 24% below $5.50/day ($2000/yr) line. India has also decreased extreme poverty, down to 2% in 2023. At $3.20/day, they declined to 21%. At $5.50, they are at 81%. Most people are poor, but less poor than they were.

486sx33 2y ago

[flagged]

OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
More people live in China and India. Their government is doing a better job at keeping emissions down, per person. Pollution doesn't care where you live.
- downrightmike 2y ago
  According to a 2016 study, electricity theft and fraud in India can account for almost 20% of the country's total electricity generation. Other sources have reported that the percentage of lost electricity due to theft can range from 20% to 50%. Electricity theft can be a result of poor governance, and power distribution companies (discoms) that are already in debt can face significant losses. Some say that the government needs to promote better governance in the sector to help manage the issue. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421516300878#:~:text=More%20than%2020%%20of%20the%20electricity%20generated,over%20a%20time%20span%20of%20five%20years https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    So tl;dr the Indian govt should be less corrupt. I think phasing out their coal plants would be a far easier and more realistic task to tackle.
netsharc 2y ago
And will you be happy if iPhones and Walmart toys cost, let's say 30% more, because of China mandating CO2 emissions compensation? (Although such a compensation is mostly mythical). Or that the shelves of Walmart are bare ("Sorry we can only produce 10% of what we're able to, emission caps"), and prices are sky-high because of the law of supply and demand? I bet you'll be moaning then too.
- 2y ago

wmanley 2y ago

Yes to India and the USA. China and Europe are roughly on par.

bcrosby95 2y ago

[flagged]

h0l0cube 2y ago
Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions. Not sure what else you expect them to do > Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. [..] In 2023, China commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022, while its wind additions also grew by 66% year-on-year. Globally, solar PV alone accounted for three-quarters of renewable capacity additions worldwide. https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summar...
energy123 2y ago
China has emitted much less in absolute since the industrial revolution, less per capita today, they're poor, they're rapidly building out renewables faster than anyone, they're powering the world's transition to renewables with the cheapest solar panels and batteries, they're expected to hit their coal peak in the next two years, Xi has made it a publicly stated policy priority recently to decarbonise their economy, and they're the world's manufacturer which means their economy has to play on hard mode relative to a service economy like the US. It's wrong to point the finger at them as some kind of uniquely bad actor. Yes they have to decarbonise, but so does everyone at at the same time, and this bad faith argument keeps being resurrected as an excuse to do nothing at home.

magicalhippo 2y ago

> and that's ignoring the fact they do all of our manufacturing. Any estimate of how much that constitutes? Like if US and EU had to produce themselves all the stuff they now get from China, how would their CO2 emissions change?

h0l0cube 2y ago
Emissions embedded in trade https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-trade?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra... Trade adjusted emissions per capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
thinkcontext 2y ago
Those numbers are from 2016. Numbers from 2022 have China ahead of the EU with them heading in the opposite direction. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?tab=chart&country=CHN~IND~OWID_WRL~USA~OWID_EU27~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?...
- h0l0cube 2y ago
  Not sure who you're replying to, but when you factor in trade, China is still a touch behind the EU and seems to be trending away. I see 2022 on the chart (you might have to make sure you have JS enabled) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

anonym29 2y ago

They collectively still emit substantially more than the US and Western Europe, and much more importantly, GHG emissions have been declining in the US and Western Europe for over two decades. In that same time period, they have done nothing but grow rapidly in China and India. All the information we have so far suggests that India will continue to grow rapidly in this regard even after China plateaus on carbon emissions. We can play semantic games with per-capita consumption, but the fact of the matter remains that even if the entirety of the planet, except China and India, went 100% carbon neutral overnight, it would still be impossible to avoid hitting catastrophic climate change thresholds due to GHG emissions from those two countries alone. They are both countries home to a rapidly rising broad middle class, and that middle class is going to want to enjoy the spoils of materialistic consumerism (the true root cause of human-induced climate change) just as much as our grandparents did, our parents did, and we do.

h0l0cube 2y ago
> We can play semantic games with per-capita consumption, but the fact of the matter remains that even if the entirety of the planet, except China and India, went 100% carbon neutral overnight, it would still be impossible to avoid hitting catastrophic climate change thresholds due to GHG emissions from those two countries alone. Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions. > Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. [..] In 2023, China commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022, while its wind additions also grew by 66% year-on-year. Globally, solar PV alone accounted for three-quarters of renewable capacity additions worldwide. https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summar... The western world is shifting away from China to India and the rest of Asia for manufacturing, so I think the desire for cheaper products and ‘national security’ are going to increase emissions somewhat. But even still, with the glut of renewables, and soon the glut of batteries, emissions free energy is going to be the cheapest option for manufacturing anyway
- throwaway290 2y ago
  > Of all the countries China is doing the most to curb its emissions. False. They have good green PR to justify other governments funneling taxpayer money via subsidies but meanwhile they are building the most coal plants than any country and this has been only ramping up in recent years with more new fossil fuel power plants being approved year on year. https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-coal-power-construction-in-2023-report-says/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-responsible-for-95-of-new-...

glenstein 2y ago

>China and India emit significantly less CO2 per capita Which would be great if CO2's heat trapping properties depended on the per capita emissions of their nation of origin. Unfortunately CO2 molecules don't know where they came from and can't adjust their heat trapping properties accordingly, and instead it's about absolute amounts as ppm of the atmosphere. But there's a silver lining for China and India - which is that even small reductions in their per capita emissions cash out as massive reductions in absolute terms. So in terms of bang for the buck per-capita wise, they are the top candidates for emissions savings.

geysersam 2y ago
Just no. In terms of bang for buck it's easier to reduce emissions in rich countries with high emissions per capita. Unless by "buck" you mean the number of decisions that need to be made, but that's hardly the limiting factor. Country sizes are arbitrary. With your logic if China was to split into a bunch of smaller nations their emissions wouldn't matter any more? Per-capita emissions is the only reasonable way to measure.
- deleted 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- HPsquared 2y ago
  It costs more bucks to change a rich person's mind, than a poor person's mind.
- glenstein 2y ago
  If the Earth's population was 1 billion, 10 billion, or 100 billion, but the emissions were the same, in each of those cases we would be cooked to death by our own atmosphere. Even though they have wildly different per capita emissions. Or to put it a different way, if all I knew were the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, and all you knew were per capita consumption figures, I would know when the atmosphere was truly cooked and you wouldn't.

downrightmike 2y ago

Per capita doesn't mean shit when their actual gross is way higher.

Qwertious 2y ago
Per capita is a proxy for discussing how much emissions they need. If you're not considering anyone's need, then you're basically telling them to go kill themselves and they'll likewise completely ignore anything you have to say. If we ignore China's/India's needs and what they actually can do while talking about what they should do, then the whole discussion is a waste of time.
datavirtue 2y ago
Agreed. Per capita arguments sound like toddlers arguing over who is closer to the other.

throwaway290 2y ago

China emits more per capita than EU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?tab=chart&country=CHN~IND~OWID_WRL~USA~OWID_EU27~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-ghg-emissions?....

h0l0cube 2y ago
Not when you adjust for trade: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Why do you discount export emissions? Is it forced on them against their will or they don't profit from it? Shall we also adjust for things like how much of their emissions could have been green, etc?
  - netsharc 2y ago
    I'm not the same commenter as above, but, why not? In the extreme hypothetical scenario, a country could be net-zero and have the newest iPhone every year, throw away their good PCs because Windows 11 needs a modern one with TPM 2.0, fast fashion, and steak for dinner every night, because everything's produced in the neighboring country. And then when the world says "We need to be better about our carbon output", your argument is like the country of Netzeroland saying "Well don't blame me, I'm net zero on CO2, blame Neighboristan over there! I don't need to change, they need to change!", when in fact its people also need to change their consumption habits. Whether it's forced, it seems like a philosophical question about economics. Do you go to work willingly, or because you're forced to, because you want to be able to afford food, housing, and iPhone 17? Or it's a tragedy of the commons scenario. If there's demand, and Neighboristan is able to but doesn't supply it, their citizens are forced by government to give up sources of income; meanwhile the citizens of We-Also-Build-iPhones-And-Make-Cheap-Shirts-ia are raking the money in and travelling around the world and taking selfies of their steak meals with their iPhones, and citizens of Neighboristan will get jealous and think "Why can't we do that?". And they'll either vote in a government that will allow this, or revolt. And consumers in the West enable this behavior by wanting the cheapest bang for the buck. If China charges for CO2, your cheap Walmart toy gets more expensive, and you don't buy it, Walmart will say "we'll find a supplier in Vietnam/India/etc where there's no such CO2 fees."...