In 2017, US had largest decline in CO2 emissions | Hacker News Reader

In 2017, US had largest decline in CO2 emissions

aei.org

139 pointslxm105 comments

How much of this drop is due to the US essentially "exporting" it's emissions?

The underlying data is specifically for "emissions from energy". The emissions created during the production of goods imported into the US are not captured here. Manufacturing that has been off-shored would look like a net positive in US emissions, but could actually result in higher world-wide emissions.

A better view would be “consumption-based emission inventories”

See section III.5 here:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...

"... if we switched to a consumption-based reporting system (which corrects for this trade), in 2014 the annual CO2 emissions of many European economies would increase by more than 30% (the UK by 38%; Sweden by 66%; and Belgium's emissions would nearly double); and the USA's emissions would increase by 7%. On the other hand, China's emissions would decrease by 13%; India's by 9%; Russia's by 14% and South Africa by 29%."

"A better view would be “consumption-based emission inventories”"

That's a different view, to pursue a different agenda, and is certainly not a better view.

When every greenhouse gas emission argument boils down to "Why the US/The West is to blame for everything", it turns the whole discussion into anti-science farce.

But the science of emissions is considered solid among sane people and not a point of contention. It's the economics of emissions that people debate over. So wouldn't it make sense to take on the more economic/political view of the problem ?

Read the numbers! The point is not who is "to blame" for everything, but to measure how the emission-generating supply chains are coupled to consumer demands. The point is that while we only regulate CO2 emissions at the nation-state level, we only generate an incentive to outsource your heavy industries elsewhere (generating the same or greater emissions) and then ship the resulting finished goods over longer distances, adding more carbon.

We need to decrease net global CO2 emissions to zero, and then further into the negatives. Period. Do-or-die. Everything else is a plutocrat's distraction.

Very little. As described in the research (and this is not novel), cheap natural gas from fracking has hugely displaced coal as a domestic power source.

Did the research account for the leak resulted from fracking? This is good news regardless.

The year-over-year change in consumption-based emission inventories probably does not deviate enough from the trend in emissions from energy to make a huge change.

The US would still be the right direction and China and Russia would still be in the wrong direction of the trend.

Very funny statement. Why US is in right direction? Do you know the absolute volume of how much US produced CO2 emissions in 2017, and compared with other countries?

Before I even looked at this, I just knew commie china would be leading the offenders. Too bad we couldnt just install a big dome over them and see what happens.

Russia: yes.

China: not so clear.

As far as climate goes, what matters is the total amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The amount in the atmosphere is a function of the history of emissions, not just a function of recent emissions. Here's a chart showing cumulative CO2 emissions 1900-2002: https://timeforchange.org/cumulative-co2-emissions-by-countr...

If we were to figure out that total maximum acceptable CO2 in the atmosphere to keep the climate from warming to much, and divvy that up between countries based on nearly any fair allocation method, how much of their quota each country was using would be something like this:

  700% US
  650% Germany
  600% UK
  470% Canada
  450% Russia
  320% France
  260% Japan
  220% Italy
   30% China
   12% India

One could make a decent case that as long as a country is below 100%, it is OK for it to choose growth and development even though that increases emissions.

I believe that this is why most international climate agreements include aid for developing countries. We recognize that even if they put extraordinary effort into it the US, Germany, Russia, etc., would not be able to get down to 100% until long after it was too late, and so we need to convince developing countries to agree to stay well below their fair 100%.

But the way a country normally goes from developing to developed is by exploiting cheap, but environmentally unfriendly, resources. It is only after a country becomes a rich, developed, country that it can afford to exploit clean but expensive technology. If we just ask the developing countries to stay well below their fair 100%, we are in effect asking them to stay poor. They are not going to agree to that.

Hence, developed countries need to pay to build up developing countries to the point where developing countries can become developed countries without needing to exploit cheap but dirty technology.

> One could make a decent case that as long as a country is below 100%, it is OK for it to choose growth and development even though that increases emissions.

No, one can't make a decent case of that. China and India have access to radically better renewable energy technology and coal alternatives including very safe nuclear and natural gas.

The US didn't have access to any of that in 1920. Today is not the same as 70 or 100 years ago. The excuse for burning so much coal is considerably debased now.

It'd be like claiming that the USSR/Britain/France/Rome got to wage massive wars of annexation in the past, why doesn't the new superpower - China - also get to do that across all of Asia? Just because X bad thing happened in the past, it doesn't mean countries in the future should get to replicate the mistakes of the past and that it should be acceptable practice (so that they too get their fair share of doing horrible things).

The whole idea of investing hundreds of billions of dollars into renewable energy technology over decades is so we don't replicate the mistakes of the past.

Besides the obviousness of that, China and India should desperately want to avoid those past mistakes, both for strategic reasons and for the basic health of their people. Strategically China has to import huge quantities of coal, it'd be better from a security standpoint if they fulfill their energy demands via domestic renewables and nuclear.

There is no good case to be made that China and India should get to repeat the pollution mistakes of the past, that premise falls apart on every challenge.

You seem to be implicitly assuming that the only acceptable level of CO2 in the atmosphere above whatever would be there without human activity is near zero.

The mistake of the past was not that we put CO2 into the atmosphere by using cheap fuels like coal. The mistake was that we did not treat that as a temporary bootstrap phase to build up to where we could switch to cleaner sources.

> Here's a chart showing cumulative CO2 emissions 1900-2002

Such a chart is going to have a glaring omission, and it's the very rapid rise in China's CO2 emissions relative to the rest of the world. I've tried in the past to find much more up-to-date numbers on this, and failed. But it should be clear to anybody that, if you factor in total emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, China is definitely in the top 10 and maybe the top 3.

Arguing that China should get a "by" on emissions runs into the problem that China is now the biggest problem on emissions. In total emissions, China overtook the US as largest around 2005 or so, and now produces twice as much as the second place slot. On a per-capita basis, China is worse than the EU, although not quite as bad as the rich EU countries or the US. And it's not like China doesn't have the ability to produce green energy--the largest solar manufacturers are all Chinese.

One facet of history is that, on an international scale, countries came to displace their predecessors not by emulating their technology but by being at the forefront of newer, better technologies. There really should be no excuse for, nor a need to excuse, inaction.

its emissions

There's lies, damned lies and statistics. I think it's very nice that percentage-wise an improvement has been made. However, when looking at the absolute numbers from a different perspective;

    US 5087M tonnes, 327M inhabitants -> ~15 tonnes/inhabitant
    EU 4152M tonnes, 511M inhabitants -> ~8 tonnes/inhabitant

Seems to me that the US still has a long way to go...

Production creates emissions, not people. A more informative ratio is tons/GDP

US 5087M tons, $19.4 trillion GDP -> 262 tons/M$

EU 4152M tonnes, $17.1 trillion GDP -> 242 tons/M$

So still worse, but not as bad as that.

Higher wealth is no excuse to produce higher emissions, if anything it should be the opposite - those with the wealth should use it to better control all negative externalities.

Wealth != production, however. As a wealthy country, you are right to argue that we should be more efficient, but some types of “production” just inherently produce a lot of CO2. A country with no heavy industry will probably have a lower per capita carbon footprint than a country with a large steel industry, but the former country couldn’t necessarily produce that steel with any less carbon, and the atmosphere doesn’t really care where the initial source is, only the absolute numbers involved.

Very few manufactured goods directly require much in the way of emissions. Currently companies simply trading off external costs for free, but their are generally many viable alternatives should such emissions be fined.

Awesome. Let's get fining!

If you have two industries, one that is highly carbon intensive and another that is less intensive, it doesn't make sense to say each country should have a "fair share" of both. Maybe country A is better at the carbon intensive one and country B is better at the non-carbon intensive one, so there's no reason to expect countries to be equal in how much carbon per anything they use. From the perspective of the entire world, somebody has to do all sorts of different things, so it's probably not fair to discriminate between legitimate industries. We do want to reduce the amount of carbon used by all industries, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to require them to be equal. It would be like saying a heavy truck has to use the same amount of fossil fuels as a moped.

Banking does not create meaningful emissions. So emission vs GDP when ignoring imported goods is meaningless.

Not meaningless, but I agree it says more about industry composition than how green their energy is.

Emissions vs people is a good metric if you think that every person should get an emissions budget. If pollution externalities are inevitable, it's most just to require that a Nepali and an American have the same emissions budget. Why does an American get to pollute way more?

If person A drives a truck, and person B writes code at their desk, it doesn't make sense to say we have to equalize their carbon usage, whether per person or per $ of income or output. Some activities inherently use more fossil fuels than others. Making them all use equal amounts is not a reasonable goal, just because we are trying to reduce them all.

It's not about comparing two individuals, but national budgets. One country shouldn't be able to pollute 10x another country without repercussions.

Why not? You are assuming each country does basically the same stuff, rather than a divergent set of stuff they do best. If you drive people around in a car for a living, and I don't, it's palpably unfair to hold us to the same carbon budget. If you weren't driving me, I'd be driving you!

There is no reason the industry in one country should be exactly as carbon intensive as that in another, any more than the IT sector should be the same relative size, or the steelmaking sector should be the same.

It's equivalent to saying each person should get a production budget, that every person in the world should have an equal income.

If you're more efficient, you can produce more with the same emissions budget.

>Production creates emissions, not people

People most certainly create emissions, and manufacturing and construction accounts for just 20%.

AC, heated pools, cheap houses with little insulation, long commutes, SUVs, to the door delivery, etc.

Just for fun, an average human produces ~0.35 tonnes of CO2 a year due to breathing. [0]

[0] http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/how-much-does-human-breathing...

Just a brief melange of twitter links, but worth noting that:

Global carbon emissions supposedly increased 1-3% for 2017: https://mobile.twitter.com/i/web/status/930027167689342976

And US EPA might’ve been underreporting some it’s methane emissions by 60% : https://mobile.twitter.com/chrfield/status/10153735848757289...

The US’s emission declines are decreasing due to economic / administration changes - from https://amp.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/limiting-g... - “News in recent days that the Trump administration plans to bolster the ailing US coal-fired power industry by intervening in markets would worsen the global emissions picture.

The CSIRO's Dr Canadell said while US carbon emissions had fallen for a decade, last year's decline will likely be much smaller because of quickening economic growth at home and abroad.”

The source is fishy.

> The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

> AEI had sent letters to scientists offering $10,000 plus travel expenses and additional payments, asking them to critique the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.[142] This offer was criticized as bribery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

AEI is basically on the same level with Brookings Institution, both have their ideological leanings but neither do necessarily bad work as a degree of policy is always about interpretation and argument on priorities.

An example of more ideologically bent DC think thanks would be Heritage Foundation and Competitive Enterprise Institute on the right, and Center for American Progress, and Center for Budget and Policy Priorities on the left.

> AEI is basically on the same level with Brookings Institution, both have their ideological leanings but neither do necessarily bad work as a degree of policy is always about interpretation and argument on priorities.

That is incorrect, as far as I know. AEI exists to provide intellectual support to the desired policies of certain conservative groups, such as neocons[0] and the fossil fuel industry. AEI has long been a source of fossil fuel industry arguments against climate change action, for example[1]; you can predict AEI's 'research' conclusions on any issue based on the politics. Brookings is an independent research organization, non-partisan, and the world's most respected think tank by some measures.[2]

Of course Brookings has some biases and failings, but a false equivalency that says 'everyone has biases' is simply not the truth. Everyone is a liar, but some people are far more trustworthy than others; all code has bugs, but it's not all of equal quality.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=neocons+site:aei.org

[1] https://www.aei.org/tag/climate-change/

[2] Look up the University of Pennsylvania's think tank survey; as of a couple years ago, Brookings was #1 (I don't have time to look myself right now; sorry!).

If you have a problem with the study or methodology, let’s hear it; otherwise, ad hominem attacks don’t add anything to the conversation.

It is not an ad hominem attack to point out that the source of the information has previously shown to be biased and use monetary incentives to garner outcomes that fit their viewpoints.

You can argue its justified but if its not ad hominem then what is it?

It's ad hominem if you say that the study must be false because the source has a history of sponsoring fabrications which suit it's ideological biases, and that the result here is one which suits those biases.

It's not, OTOH, ad hominem to point out the same fact, for instance, as a caution to those who might uncritically accept the conclusions offered by the source.

It is pointless mudslinging. Every think tank compensates scientists to write policy papers. Somehow the fact that this one was right-wing made it possible to portray the practice as nefarious, whereas when, say, the Center for American Progress compensates left-wing researchers for writing anti-minimum-wage studies that isn't considered newsworthy.

Writing papers that usefully critique the IPCC reports is important and there's nothing wrong with compensating such work. The thing AEI did "wrong" was to cast a wider net in an attempt to find people better capable of doing that. AEI was doing something praiseworthy - trying to find critiques from outside normal places a conservative think tank might look, which might highlight overlooked points of view. If that's wrong, what's the alternative? Only use papers from people you have on salary? Only use papers from people who are so solidly in your own ideological camp they won't run to the Guardian? That's nuts! Shouldn't we WANT any scientists who have reservations about the IPCC conclusions to have an incentive to write papers exploring the question?

I think it's reasonable to be dubious given the source, and for that to be the default position until there is confirmation from other independent sources. That is, it may not be worth the time necessary to figure out whether the results hold up given that there is a prior likelihood of the source intentionally cherry-picking data on one end of the statistical spectrum that supports their agenda.

I mention in a comment above that the underlying source for the data is BP [1], which is also a little suspect, and their description of the methodology [2] is way too slim to be useful for a critique or confirmation of their results.

[1] https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/stat...

[2] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-ec...

If we knew everything about how all this was conducted, and had time to understand it all, I would agree.

Or alternately, if this were a logical argument that could be completely divorced from who was saying it, it would be an Ad Hominem fallacy.

But as it stands, when it comes to gathering facts, trust and reputation of the people we're hearing the facts from is paramount. As such Ad Hominem, as it were, is valid.

I'm actually right-of-center myself. I'm scrolling through HN comments here to see what critiques people have of the organization, since I heard they are a right-of-center group and this finding is good for the right-of-center case. (So far they seem okay)

I don't have the required knowledge to form an opinion on the data or methodology, or even on another expert's opinion on those.

But I find it hard to trust the untrustworthy. Personally, I would have appreciated if the title included ", claims an organisation that used to bribe scientists".

In addition, the title is essentially clickbait, a spin on the data that's convenient for the publisher; as other commenters noted, a large absolute decrease of a really large number is still a small relative decrease; and US is still one of the most per capita polluting countries.

I don't want to sound too negative though, I definitely hope the trend continues.

Should we have that included in the title of any large agri-tech or bio-tech company then? Monsanto's bribed scientists... Bayer's bribed scientists... etc. etc. Who hasn't bribed a scientist these days?

Also, the US is now putting out the least CO2 emissions per capita in decades (since the early 60's). So atleast the US is on the right track, as this article rightfully suggests.

Well yes obviously we should, and many times we do.

There is a reason why papers usually include affiliations and funding sources.

Well there's a reason we don't trust corporate funded studies (or, at least, scrutinise them more).

The moment AEI is advocating Natural Gas (a fossil fuel, FYI) and "advanced drilling" technologies, you know they are onto something and it's increasingly clear to the public that methane leaks and the 100x potency as a greenhouse gas is making it a non-option as renewal energy source.

Also, quoting BP, one of the big three oil companies, as the data source for CO2 report is like quoting Philip Morris's research on how smoking affects lung cancer, or quoting Monsanto for resarch on how RoundUp affects human digestive system. You get the idea.

I agree that this organization pushing the data makes it suspect, in the sense that given finite time resource I'd probably not bother to review this study for methodological consistencies and instead wait on confirmation or refutation from secondary sources.

It appears that they are just parroting back data from BP [1], which unfortunately just passes the buck to another organization with suspect motivations. Their methodology refers to the IPCC recommendations, so if followed should at least be consistent with other attempts to measure CO2 output, but without more detail of the inputs to the model it's difficult to be sure.

[1] https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/stat...

Regardless of the source, its well known that natural gas and fracking is causing a huge emissions drop. This often flies in the face of peoples cognitive bias on the matter, and it should. Reconcile your "faith" with fact. Many can't except the reality that economic incentives vastly outway any government policy. CO2 emissions wont be solved by more regulations, they will be solved by transitioning our economy to cleaner sources, electric cars, lab grown meats, vertical farms, self driving electric planes, ships, trucks (think about the carbon loss of supporting a human operators. Truck stops go away, restaurants and hotels close, etc). The government would be better suited subsidizing or giving tax breaks to the technology we want to see roll out, or simply get out of the way all together, rather than silly ideas like carbon taxes and onerous regulations that just end up targeting the poorest blue collar workers.

Carbon taxes are a very market oriented approach, not a silly idea.

Natural gas extraction and transmission turns out to emit more methane to the point of negating its lower CO2 emission benefits. https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-climate-activists-failed-...

I actually admit, after some digging, you may have a point here. My point was more about market solutions vs big government policy. Solar and Wind typically compete with natural gas for replacement of coal plants. I for one would prefer more solar. I think subsidies for the tech we want to see to reach scale and parity faster is a decent middle ground approach that acknowledges the market forces. The problem is we tend to rip that money away all at once, rather than scale it back VERY gradually.

Even gov subsidies turn out diasterously and is frequently a big waste of money. See: the previous US administrations multi-billion dollar 'clean coal' factory that ultimately doubled it's already massive budget and was delayed repeatedly for years. And the solar company backed by the administration and touted as a great example of public/private partnership, which proceeded to go bankrupt and waste plenty of resources.

I know failure is common in all business but waste, cronyism, lack of urgency, etc all seem to affect public/private deals more than industry arrangements. Private industry is simply far better at choosing winners, coordinating capital, recruiting talent, and managing projects.

When these projects fail everyone then blames 'markets' and private industry for what happened... despite the massive involvement of government and the fact it would likely never have existed without state backing. Then use those examples as why we need negative incentives, fines, and regulations on existing industry instead.

>> https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-climate-activists-failed-....

Off the topic!

But here is the Author's bio on the article

--------------------------------------------------

Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org, an international environmental organization. His is the author of more than a dozen books about the environment, most recently Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist.

---------------------------------------------------

"His is the author of.." WTF Yale!

edit: Also as the author's profile reflect he is not a credible neutral authority! Visit the site 350.org, and see for yourself.

>> a very market oriented approach, not a silly idea.

Market approached only make sense where they work. They quickly become silly when the market no longer supports the end goal. A dramatic reduction in the cost of some fossil fuels, which could happen should we all stop burning gas in our cars, may make any market approach seem very silly.

And all the "blue collar" workers at those hotels and truck stops? Dont assume that everyone supports driverless tech. Many regulations and taxation schemes do effectively protect the blues from the worst behaviors of the white-collared. Dont fall into the trap of thinking that all government is a conspiracy to keep you down. That belief, that a wild west dominated by tech companies can solve all problems, is the stuff of highschool economics papers and Marvel movies. Reality is never that simple.

> And all the "blue collar" workers at those hotels and truck stops?

Don't worry, universal basic income will save them. /s

There is a difference between jobs lost from automation and technological advancement, and jobs lost from pointless policy decisions.

I don't fall into any traps. I did say some gov subsidy MIGHT be beneficial in order to get technologies that are merely being held back by economies of scale to where they need to be faster. Hardcore libertarians freak at this as well, but I'm a bit more case by case. For example, subsidizing solar panel production until it reaches price parity with natural gas, then start scaling back the subsidy very slowly.

> lab grown meats, vertical farms

Sorry to burst you bubble, but at least these two are a disaster for the environment and potentially for our health as well. And it’s pretty tragic how we tell ourselves fairytales in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Got a source for these claims? Because I do:

https://www.new-harvest.org/environmental_impacts_of_culture...

"The paper predicted that, based on current published figures and research, complete replacement of conventional meat with cultured meat would result in an incredible 78-98% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 99% reduction in land use and 82-96% reduction in water use,and 45% reduction in energy use."

Likelywise, vertical farms simply need green energy sources to achieve less of a footprint:

https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192/vertical-farming-agr...

"But Vosburg says the company’s priority is to use contextually appropriate renewable energy sources to power the farms, such as wind energy in the Midwest, hydro in the Northwest, and solar in the Southwest... “Yes, it sounds crazy to take the sun and turn it into electricity and turn that electricity back into light. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what we’ll be doing,” Vosburg says. “It’ll be really efficient and clean and create a better product, and it won’t have the same carbon impact that we’re having today.” ... And energy isn’t even a vertical farm’s top ongoing expense. The companies Civil Eats spoke to say labor is actually their largest budget item. Vertical farms typically pay workers higher, more metropolitan pay rates than both dirt farms—many of which rely heavily on migrant labor—and the more automated smart greenhouses. "

That all sounds like technical problems that can be solved with the right equipment, scale, and maybe some automation.

Natural gas and fracking also cause huge Methane leaks, so...

Based on a BP study, the US had the "largest decline" of CO2 emissions in 2017, where largest decline is in absolute terms for that period only, not in relative terms.

BP == British Petro?

If so, it's in their best interest to always conclude 'nothing to see here, move along' when it comes to pollution/environmental concerns... I would treat such a 'study' with the heavy skepticism it deserves.

It's like as if McDonalds had released a study saying that obesity in the US is on the decline.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-denier...

“American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has a long track record of distorting the science and solutions of climate change. Its arguments tend to de-emphasize the environmental and economic risks of climate change, exaggerate the costs of addressing the problem and question the value of putting a policy in place at all.”

Now they, not surprisingly, intentionally confuse the readers using only the numbers that support their agenda.

I don't trust any statistic I haven't faked myself.

From the article links, I think the overall emissions are probably the better thing to look at

https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-ec...

seems to show year after year, we keep increasing. Except 2009 ( I wonder if that was because of the fallout of the economic crash in 2008? )

Assuming all the warnings about climate change related to C02 emissions. Seems like we aren't going to be able to turn the ship before it is has a massive impact. My guess is nothing will change until we have some good alternatives to fossil fuel (Nuclear fusion? Awesome battery tech? )

I'm a greenie, but I do figure natural gas could potentially be a stepping stone while we try to figure out the fossil fuel alternative. I don't see it as a long term solution, but at half the CO2 and much cleaner burning, it definitely seems like we should be scrapping coal as fast as we can- which could meaningfully decrease the US's total emissions.

Then, we figure out what to do next. We just need Zeno's Paradox working for us.

Nuclear please.

Sure, and that could be the next step. Unfortunately building reactors is a decade long process. This can be where gas turbines, which can be built far faster, could be a bridge.

> My guess is nothing will change until we have some good alternatives to fossil fuel

Not even necessarily then. Fission is a good alternative, and it could've been massively deployed decades ago. (Just think of how many billions of tons of emissions could've been avoided.)

More on point... more radioactive material is released by coal emissions than by nuclear reactor waste output annually.

The rest of the world will fund the technology and scale necessary, then in 10-15 years when renewables plus storage and electric cars are cheaper than the existing technology US Republicans will have a volte-face, deploy at scale, and claim they saved the world through unregulated capitalism. And the rest of the world won’t mind.

Let's hope we can put some steep fines on the US for inaction, or other penalties (tariffs in other products / technologies) to recoup those investments, done while the biggest polluter is refusing to take responsibility.

The ideal solution would be to tax exporting climate tech to the US, but the world wants a fast adoption of clean technologies, so we need to balance this unfair situation otherwise.

Do you have an example of a similar fine on a nation from history that worked?

The punishment of Germany after WWI is surely the finest of such examples

Let's do it better this time.

The US is anyway in a belligerant course, there is no reason for the world to opt for appeasement.

Backing down from perfect legitimate demands just because maybe the US could retaliate militarilly (to non-military measures) is ludicrous.

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail.

The US could also retaliate economically. It is the largest economy in the world and possesses the most attractive consumer market. Germany threatens to "punish" the US -> No more importing BMWs. Unfortunately Europes economy has lagged for so many years that it is unrealistic to threaten economic sanctions

The US can go one step further very easily, by doing nothing. All it has to do is look the other way for five minutes and Russia will begin reassembling its empire in eastern Europe. It would immediately begin taking territory back. Russia would rip Europe apart, trivially, because of how weak Western Europe is militarily today. It's entirely unable to defend itself, outside of France and the UK having nukes (which they're not going to use to stop Russia in eastern Europe).

The US could also let Russia begin messing with Canada's northern territory. Canada is entirely unable to defend itself, with their tiny 1% military budget. There's nothing Canada could do to stop Russia.

The US could let China take its historic anger out on Japan; they would end up conquering Japan one way or another. The US could pull troops out of South Korea, the North would immediately conquer / obliterate the South. China would immediately take Taiwan, with hardly a fight at all.

China would then move to become far more aggressive toward Australia, viewing it as a potential resource colony. Australia's only defense option would be to develop nukes as fast as possible.

If the US stood down in Latin America as the overwatch in the hemisphere, those countries would begin killing each other for territorial conquest. Venezuela is the obvious prize there to be invaded by Brazil or Colombia. Lots of smaller Latin American nations would fall.

The world as we know it would collapse rapidly if the US just looked the other way and stopped restraining the type of conquest behavior that pervades all of human history. That would of course be to its own detriment if it went too far, as authoritarian China would likely then rule the planet, perhaps for a very long time.

No, but I also do not have a precedent for a country not taking responsibility for CO2 emisions.

It's still a good solution.

It would appear form the source that the US has not been inactive. Just because it is not government mandated like in Europe, doesn't mean its not working. The US is much more private sector focused than Europe. The first example that comes to my mind is Tesla. They've been a non government mandated positive that would be impossible in other countries

More could be done. This can not be left to the vagaries of the markets. The whole world is committed, except the US, even after being the biggest polluter, currently, cumulatively, per capita and per GDP.

Very unfair.

US is not currently the biggest source of CO2. That would be China.

It does not have the highest CO2 emissions per capita. Have a look at Canada and Australia, for example.

It certainly does not have the highest CO2 emissions per GDP. Tons of countries are higher on that count, for example China.

What is the:

- rank of CO2 emissions, total, currently

- rank of CO2 emissions, total, cumulative

- rank of CO2 emissions, per capita, currently

- rank of CO2 emissions, per capita, cumulative

- rank of CO2 emissions, per GDP, currently

- rank of CO2 emissions, per GDP, cumulative

- rank of CO2 emissions, per capita-per GDP, currently

- rank of CO2 emissions, per capita-per GDP, cumulative

The US is at the top, or near the top, in all of those lists.

Not only it is the biggest polluter according to those ranks, it is also the only country refusing to take responsibility.

The US is not the biggest polluter according to those ranks in fact. You're claiming that despite your own setup proving that isn't the case.

China is the biggest output source of CO2 on earth and their output is rising aggressively and is likely set to continue doing so as their people see their standard of living climb. The overwhelmingly majority of their energy comes from coal, and they have no intention to put an end to that. That means China is going to keep right on widening the gap on their CO2 output lead.

The US is not the leader on CO2 emissions per capita. Saudi Arabia and Australia as both higher. And at the rate Canada is going, it's either already higher or is going to be soon.

The cumulative data isn't a valid excuse. Any nation that had the largest economy from 1890 to 1990 would have been the leader by default on cumulative emissions. There were no good renewable alternative approaches, and until the 1960s nuclear power wasn't practical at all. Besides, at the rate China is polluting, it's going to rapidly overtake the US on every cumulative point: its economy is radically bigger than the US economy was both 50 and 100 years ago and is putting out radically more CO2 (in every respect).

Every year of CO2 output by China is equal to 20+ years of US CO2 output prior to WW2. For one example, just look at the size of the US steel industry in 1930 vs China's today. It won't take China more than another few years at their current rate of CO2 output, to perpetually own the cumulative figures across the board. China's economy is already twice the size in real terms of the US economy in 1965, when the US owned 1/2 of all global manufacturing; in just one decade, China will be 4x the size of the US economy in 1965.

But it's not just "not government mandated", it's that the current US president went as far as to ban the term "climate change" building a list of "phrases to be avoided".

Surely that doesn't help, no matter how private sector focused the USA is, in fact it's actively undermining the effort to save our planet.

Speaking of which, what incentive does the private sector have to save the planet beyond its own back yard?

Why does Tesla do it? Isn't it like, Elon Musk's personal mission, his own choice? Is this a common occurrence yet, then, in the US automotive industry? Are they gaining an majority yet on the other companies, you know the ones that couldn't give a rat's ass about saving the planet. Cause I only ever hear about Tesla being a unique outlier, saving the planet through capitalism instead of regulation. But since the US private sector is doing such a great job without regulation and the government's deafening silence, I guess there must be a ton more of these companies operating at similar scale, developing new tech to help solve climate change. Are other industries doing the same?

Are there any historical examples where unregulated capitalism somehow ended up solving ecological problems of its own creation? Of course I mean, adjusted for the amount of times it wrecked ecosystems because of its tendency to deep dive into tragedy-of-the-commons scenarios.

The really large scale ecological problems I've seen (somewhat) solved in my lifetime have all been through government regulation. Acid rain and ozone holes, to be specific.

Isn't it, if you think about it rationally, a capitalist solution can only solve problems on a local level. If it doesn't affect the bottom line, then there is no incentive to be "better", because companies measure "better" in profit, anything else is meaningless. As soon as the company grows to control things on a global scale, and therefore be incentivised to keep their resources (living environment) intact on a global scale, then it might as well be a government. At least in terms of power.

...in the world for 9th time this century

That seems an important qualifier?

If we try a little harder next year, maybe our reduction will offset EU's increase... we got close this year.

The EU increase was a fluke, caused by the drought in Spain, which forced them to compensate the poor hydro production with fossil fuels. But they are already committed to close down the coal plants by the end of next year, increasing solar and wind to compensate.

What the US should worry about is its CO2 emissions per capita, which are still 2x the EU's. Quite a way to go.

Dismissing it as a fluke is a bit short-sighted. The EU's problem with its energy policy is that it has often accidentally been regressive in terms of CO₂ emissions. Germany's decision to abandon its nuclear plants provided a sharp rise in emissions, for example, at a time when fracking in the US was causing coal plants to switch to natural gas in droves.

The US's emissions are still bad, in absolute, per capita, and per GDP terms. However, the trends are still on a downwards trend, and even the current administration's policies are unlikely to be able to change that. The country to be most concerned about is China, whose emissions are the largest in an absolute sense, and even on a per capita basis are about ½ the US's, and these numbers are on upwards trends.

> What the US should worry about is its CO2 emissions per capita

Climate change does not care about "per capita" or where it originates though, only absolute values. So any reduction in absolute terms is valuable

> The EU increase was a fluke, caused by the drought in Spain

Drought, fluke?

I was of the understanding that longer more severe weather events are predicted by the climate models?

So rather than being a fluke isn't this directly caused by unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions?

Fair enough, "fluke" may not be the correct word. What I mean is that it wasn't a permanent increase, but a response to an occasional event (even if those events are expected to become more common).

Yes the only way we would "catch up" from that perspective would be if Europe were to keep increasing its output, which is unlikely. But really this detail seems unimportant. We're back to 1992 levels, and there is still room for improvement. We'll be perfectly happy never catching up to Europe in this sense.

This is the American Enterprise Institute quoting a report from British Petroleum. I don't trust anything these people have to say about emissions. They lie too much on the subject.

How can we spin this a bit so the skeptics don’t run with this?

It's amazing how commentators here just cannot accept the US as anything other than a source of evil. The US has been doing environmentalism since Europe was busy dividing up Africa.

At this point I though it would seem farcical, if the US in some alternate universe miraculously achieved zero net carbon emissions, people would come up and say well, the US isn’t doing enough, it’s not importing (subsidizing bad actors and taking their load from them) enough carbon to help carbon emitters come in line.

Unfortunately, I have seen it suggested that net-zero is no longer sufficient; that the question has, for a while, been “how much damage will there be?” rather than “will there be any damage?”

Past emissions are still in the air.

I’m not too fussed myself, because I’ve noticed that photovoltaic is growing exponentially — literally exponentially — so we will probably soon have so much spare power we will be trivially able to absorb CO2 from the air and turn into petrol or something.

I think people are just very on guard against oil & gas interests, which represent some of the biggest money in the country and indeed the world.

Eh, the issue is not thay the US is good/bad whatever but this article frames most dialog on CO2 % change. There are a few issues:

C02 is only one greenhouse gas of which others, particularly methane from cow farts, are substabtial contributors to global warming. Americans love their red meat...

As absolute numbers, the US per capital contributions to global warming are crazy high.

If you integrated over time, the contribution of the US to global warming on a per capita basis since the industrial revolution, it is quite clear the US is an enormous driver of climate change.

Addressing your points in order:

1) Which is why the US public throws its hand up on this crap- do well on one metric and suddenly another is more important. And let's add some extemporaneous moralizing in there- if it wasn't meat or cars it would be guns.

2) But not the highest.

3) A fabricated metric that conveniently excuses the actions of past pollution/emission champions (Europe) and the current champion (China) so the self-loathing can continue.

1) Don't agree. The obviously important metric is quite clear. Contribution to global warming over some time period. Just looking at CO2 and ignoring all the other factors is fine if the science justifies ignoring those other sources and the cost per unit of GHG reduction is lowest for CO2. This isn't jumping from one metric to another, its effectively common sense.

Not sure why if it wasn't meat or cars it would be guns. Certainly healthy public debate about guns is needed since the US has way too many per capita as I understand it, but this is totally irrelevant.

2 and 3 - do you have some math or citations? I think China will quickly begin gaining ground but pretty sure the US has likely outpaced Europe. Also worth noting that it should review both per country but also per country per capita.

Found some info on the 'fabricated metric'. Btw, worth pointing out that fabricating metrics is faking data, not coming up with a metric...all metrics by your definition are fabricated.

http://berc.berkeley.edu/ranking-global-warming-contribution...

Here is a link to the most relevant part: http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-590398-galleryV9-dikr.jp...

As a citizen of somewhere other than the USA, we basically look at your guns and go “WTF”, but it’s your problem not ours so we don’t really care that much.

So being skeptical of a report from a pro-fossil fuel conservative think tank based on data from an oil company is somehow the same as being anti-American?

Corporations <> America

Think Tanks with the word "American" in them != America

Skepticism of data that contradicts every trend we've seen in the past 20 years regarding CO2 emissions does not mean someone thinks America is "evil". Maybe you're the one with a not-so-hidden bias?

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