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Climate doesn't care about population or per capita metrics. The only metric that matters is CO2 PPM.
by enraged_camel 9mo ago
Climate doesn't care about population or per capita metrics. The only metric that matters is CO2 PPM.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoSo all China needs to do is split in two to halve their emissions?
- enraged_camel 9mo agoWhat? My point is that people tend to turn emissions into a pissing contest about which country is emitting more, and it always becomes a debate of total emission vs. per capita, because it's ultimately a political issue. What I'm saying is that total emissions are what matter for climate change.
- Y-bar 9mo agoTotal emissions matter on a global scale. To know approximately how much each nation ought to adjust their emissions we need to look at per capita adjusted for imports/exports for products and services consumed locally but created remotely.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoYou said per capita doesn’t matter. If China split evenly into two new countries, each country’s emissions are half what China’s was. This is why per capita matters.
- wtcactus 9mo agoNo, all China has to do, is to emmit the same CO2/land mass as the USA (or better, as the EU).
- ceejayoz 9mo agoSo if they annex Mongolia and Siberia, their emissions went massively down? Nah.
- andsoitis 9mo ago> CO2/land mass as the USA I'm trying, but really struggling, to understand your logic of anchoring on land area. Can you explain why you think that's a better metric than per capita? Is it because there are climate-changing emissions that are NOT driven by humans (e.g. seasonal wildfires, volcanic eruptions, etc.)? Or is it something else?
- wtcactus 9mo agoThe amount of emissions that the planet can take (a that is the real crux of the problem) is what its ecosystems can offset. It’s very hard to calculate exactly how much the ecosystem inside a country borders can offset, but a good enough metric is its landmass. Sure, countries like Morrocos will win with this metric and countries like Brasil will lose. But in the end, it’s much better than rewarding what is actually a problem (for climate) like if it was some virtue: high birth rates.
- andsoitis 9mo agoThanks for explaining your thinking. > It’s very hard to calculate exactly how much the ecosystem inside a country borders can offset, but a good enough metric is its landmass. I think this is a flawed basis, because weather patterns, sea rise, etc. don't honor country borders. Only highly localized pollution is somewhat "constrained", but country borders are even porous to that. So I still don't know that it is an effective incentive to find a better balance. Per capita also has its problems, like penalizing less-developed countries from developing their societies, industries.
- maxglute 9mo agoClimate doesn't care about climate change, humans do. Only worthwhile metric is what geopolitics agree on, right now that's per capita emissions even though it's lenient vs historic emitters.