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Comment by zpeti | Hacker News Reader

> This would force Countries like China to clean up their act and stop Countries outsourcing their carbon emissions.

It's baffling to me that China and India are missing from almost all discussion of carbon emissions. They produce more CO2 than the west combined, and it's growing. And this isn't because of emission exports, as exports from china are falling yet their emissions are growing. It's because of their growing internal consumption.

Any serious discussion needs to include them. Otherwise you are not actually trying to solve the CO2 problem, just virtue signalling or actually wanting western decline, not a global warming solution.

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They are missing in large part because the participants in the discussions are typically from the west and have little to no agency in china or India.

Additionally trying to point blaming fingers at these distant countries is typically easily identified as a tactic to do less oneself and to shift blame.

Additionally it is often not brought up because (and i hope you don't mind me picking the more extreme comparison to be made.) India has a co2 output per capita about 1/10th of that of the US which should hint at the fact that the US since it's the more developed country has boatloads of low hanging fruit it could tackle. Especially since it outputs more than double per capita than let's say the EU.

Additionally it is often not brought up because after decades of outputting comparatively gargantuan amounts of co2 having those large emitters then pointing at countries not developed to the same standard and denied much of the same easy source of energy influential in achieving said development is a surefire way to get those countries to not give a single fuck and consequentially just contributes to screwing us all.

Additionally it is often not brought up because trying to draw it down to singular nationstate comparisons as if they're individual actors in all this aside from being absolutely useless and obviously dishonest innevitably leads to a comparison to some tiny petrostate which despite putting out loads of co2 and not giving a fuck still looks better in the dishonest comparison than the likes of the US.

None of those arguments hold up.

Those countries do have agency, they do participate in discussions and sign treaties, they just keep increasing CO2 emissions.

Per capita does not matter, totals do. Would it make a difference if Switzerland stopped emitting CO2 completely and no one else changes anything.

You cannot change the past, you can change the future. Unless those countries follow the same standards as the west (and very, very soon) then CO2 emissions are going to keep rising. Right now China has single companies that emit more CO2 that the whole of the UK, they are building coal powered power stations, and generally not giving a fuck. They see advantages in arctic ice melting and temperatures rising, as does Russia.

It is reasonable to say they cannot be expected to follow higher standards because they west did not, BUT only if you are willing to accept that CO2 emissions will therefore keep rising.

> Per capita does not matter, totals do.

I have no idea how this point gets brought up every time when it is so obvious to refute.

We, as a civilizations, have some amount of CO2 per year that we can emit without catastrophic consequences. You are basically arguing the US/European citizens should be allowed to emit a completely outsized proportion of that CO2 budget, which to me is very clearly unethical.

Also consider:

1) China splits into 10 individual states- suddenly their emissions don't matter anymore using your accounting?!

2) It seems absoutely obvious to me that reducing CO2 emissions by the same amount is MUCH easier if you start from a higher baseline: Saving a ton of CO2/year for a US family basically means "fewer individual trips on the second car the family owns". For an Indian rice farmer to save one ton means "no heating during winter".

It seems to me that you think "the west" is some kind of role model in CO2 emissions, and the onus is on developing nations to "follow the same standards"-- but that is complete bullshit; "the west" (especially the US) is doing much WORSE than basically every developing nation (which becomes very clear from CO2/capita numbers).

Adding to those arguments, you can include exports/imports into the CO2 emission estimation and suddenly one sees that a good part of China's CO2 emissions are for products that are exported to the EU and the US (Edit: see e.g. [0]).

So shifting high-emission production to China and then pointing the finger at China for products we consume is kinda dishonest.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...

>Per capita does not matter, totals do. Would it make a difference if Switzerland stopped emitting CO2 completely and no one else changes anything.

And here comes the innevitable counter blaming finger: Stop emitting so much then. Learn from idk ... Oman.

The funny thing is that this litteral petrostate doesn't emit much more per capita than the US either.

Australia: 18 tonne/year/capita

US: 16 tonne/year/capita

Germany: 9 tonne/year/capita

China: 8 tonne/year/capita

France: 5 tonne/year/capita

India: 2 tonne/year/capita

And, I mean, China is doing a lot of nuclear and solar buildout, building high speed rail all over the place, and is one of the world leaders in electric car adoption (the only large countries where they have a higher market share for new cars are Germany and the Netherlands). It's unlikely to ever hit US/Australia per capita rates or anything like them.

There's a lot to criticise about China, don't get me wrong; it's a totalitarian state with a horrendous human rights record. But it's probably not the largest concern when it comes to emissions.

Also, China has stated a timeline to net zero. That timeline does call for more coal short term but then a decline and phase out as they build more and more solar, hydro, and nuclear.

China can plausibly actually meet their goals on that timeline.

Compare to the US where every time control of the White House or Congress changes parties there is a good chance the US will change its climate goals, or even abandon them. A good majority of US voters want the US to seriously address climate change, but the party that doesn't want that wins about half the elections (in large part due to gerrymandering).

> It's baffling to me that China and India are missing from almost all discussion of carbon emissions. They produce more CO2 than the west combined, and it's growing.

1. The atmosphere does a very good job of mixing CO2 emissions so except possibly near large continuous heavy CO2 emitters you'll only find about a 2.5% variation in CO2 concentration around the world.

That means that a ton of CO2 emission has essentially the same affect on everyone in the world no matter where it comes from. A ton of CO2 emitted by your activity is the same as a ton from my activity, or a ton from some rural Indian villager, or a ton from some poor African country, or a ton from anyone else.

From that it follows that for any given level of slowing or reversing warming we have a total worldwide budget for CO2 emissions per year.

The question then is how to allocate that budget.

Unless you can make a good case that some people deserve a bigger share of that worldwide CO2 budget, the only sensible allocation is to give each person an equal share. If we wanted to limit emissions to current levels that works out to a bit under 5 tons per person per year.

The US is doing about 15 tons per person per year, so we are using 300% of our fair share.

China is doing 7.5 tons per person (about the middle of the range that EU countries are doing), so 150% of their fair share.

India is doing under 2 tons per person, or only about 40% of their fair share.

Cumulative emissions still came mostly from the US, Canada, EU, Australia and Japan, so the geopolitical west:

https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2

The west bootstrapped modern civilization. Other countries dont need to because cleaner technology is available now.

Modern civilization is not sustainable and that's why we have this mess.

Right, the point is its disingeuous to compare total historical CO2 output.

> The west bootstrapped modern civilization

Bootstrapped? You mean raped, pillaged, exterminated and polluted.

> Other countries dont need to because cleaner technology is available now.

'Available'? You mean poor countries have to pay rich western countries exorbitant prices to use 'clean' technology when they could simply use abundant and cheap coal, oil, etc to develop?

You act like we are trying to give underdeveloped countries free technology. No what developing regions like india, asean, africa, etc should be doing is pumping out coal, nuclear, gas, oil, fossil fuel plants and improving the lives of their people.

> You mean …

Instead of assuming what I mean, why not ask for clarification? no, I mean technology and science largely developed by the west.

> You act like we are trying to give underdeveloped countries free technology

Actually yes, rich countries give less devloped countries free technology. Billions and billions worth.

But more importantly, Information is free.

There are many less devloped countries advancing at an incredible rate, more cleanly, because of technlology and information avaialble in the modern era.

You seem a bit outraged. History isnt clean and nobody claimed it was. Ghengis Khan killed 10% of the planets population and drove the world into a global Dark Ages.

Maybe go outside and smell the roses.

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