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Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't say that "unsurprisingly many of [the top 10 polluting plants] are in China and India", when there is one in China (at rank 6, below a Polish plant, two South Korean plants and only slightly above the German one) and India has two. Especially when each of those countries has over one billion people, more than an order of magnitude more than Poland, Germany or South Korea.

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It's unsurprising because China burns a LOT of coal and has a per capita emissions about the same as the UK, even taking into account exports vs imports (!) in spite of the much lower per capita income. China burns ~51% of the world's coal, in spite of not having even close to 51% of the world's population. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-coal-consumption-...

(I think China's coal plants tend to be smaller and so don't show up on these lists.)

If everyone else drops their emissions to zero (which needs to happen) and goes autarkic, cutting off all trade with China, assuming China maintains its stability and current energy mix, we'll still be screwed from a climate perspective.

We need everyone to reduce emissions, including China and the West both.

> has a per capita emissions about the same as the UK, even taking into account exports vs imports

Wrong!

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

Your data only goes to 2016. In just 4-5 years, the UK’s per capita emissions have continued to fall (thanks to retiring coal very quickly!) while China’s has risen to above that of the OECD average for the first time: https://rhg.com/research/chinas-emissions-surpass-developed-...

Wtf? I'm talking about consumption emissions - taking into account exports/imports. That's what matters. Stop with your lies and dishonesty.

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