Hacker News Reader

This ignores the nuance that 500m of China's population lives a poor life in the countryside and are not really contributors to China's massive CO2 emissions. If you look at folks living in or near cities, China's per-capita numbers outpace those of the US by a wide margin. In other words... China has more polluting behavior to correct per-capita where the polluting occurs than the US does.

View on HN

Likely the opposite. Rural poor likely are HIGHER emissions per capita since they are still going through massive development, i.e. infra building, new housing stock. Development driven emissions spread over time that US gets to hide under historic data pre 70s, versus US's massive ongoing per capita emissions. Studies of peak cement US by province has interior poor provincings all late peak or fast growing. I don't know how anyone can look at Chinese urban dwellers living in 1-3BR apartments, with much higher savings rate (sigificanlty less consumption) and fraction of car ownership per capita and conclude they have more poluting behavior than US. Even stupid wasteful behaviors Xi is trying to crack down like food waste is a fraction of US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com