Global top polluters:
China, more than 14 million tons of CO2
United States, 6 million tons of CO2
India, 3.5 million tons of CO2
European Union, 3.4 million tons of CO2
Russia, 2 million tons of CO2
And who orders, buys and pays for all the junk? The western consumers. Who offshored their own dirty manufacturing industry to China due to their lack of workers/human rights and environmental protection? The west. Which companies profited the most from this offshoring to China? The western ones. Same for the textile/clothes industry.
So I think you're looking at the wrong elephant. Look at your elected leaders first for failing to regulate "free trade" for the sake of profiteering at the expense of the environment.
The hypocrisy of the rich western nations blaming the environmental damage on the poor countries to which they knowingly and willingly offshored their dirty industries to for profit, is mind boggling.
Also, the hypocrisy of western tech companies when dealing with China is equally grandiose:
-China's CCP: "So US big tech, you will have to host your data here and build backdoors to your services for us so we can read all your customer data and spy on your users here. Take it or leave it."
-US big-tech: "Yessir! Right away CCP! Which other way should we bend over to make money in China?"
-EU regulators: "So we're gonna need you to be upfront to your users here about your privacy invasive tracking and give users and opt-out option, and also not block your smaller competitors from accessing your gate-kept market places"
-US big-tech: "Noooo! That's tyranny! Uncle Sam help, your poor tech monopolies are being oppressed by the Europeans."Terrible argument. If it's not gonna be China, it's gonna be Vietnam, or Bangladesh, or Pakistan, or Sri Lanka, or whoever the rich west will deem fit to host their dirty industries at the most rock bottom prices so they can make a profit.
So again, is really all China's or $POOR_NATION fault, or the West's fault for constantly bidding the poor countries against each other in a race to the bottom in terms of human rights and environmental destruction for the sake of profit?
Just blaming the poor countries claiming that "well, the poor countries should just say NO to hosting the west's dirty industry", is incredibly stupid and short sighted.
In fact, outsourcing was only possible because of the various industrial plans that China had put in place in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, all of which prioritised building equivalent capacity to what existed in the West and the USSR.
Moreover, China was destroying its environment in the 1950s already, long before it even allowed real trade with the West.
Let's treat countries as responsible actors in their own right, not as mere non-independent reactors to Western actions.
To be fair, every country was destroying the environment, even in the west, well after the 1950's as well.
Meanwhile, in the US you already had strong conservationist movements starting up, leading to the creation of the EPA by 1970.
While China finally adopted some environmental protections in 1979, it wasn't until the late 1980s/early 1990s that they could override industrial development in key situations
Operation Ranch Hand ran 1962-1972, so that's a pretty lazy snipe.
While Ranch Hand was indefensible and US leaders should have been prosecuted for it, the scale of it is minuscule compared to the ecological damage of the Four Pests campaign.
And the fact the lords of capitalism only care about power and bank account size, and the scienze/religion of economics can't see further than three months into the future.
And also, I keep seeing those numbers thrown around, but it's never clear if it's on the production side or the consumption side. If it's the production side CO2, then we have to remember that a huge fraction of carbon emitted by China is for the benefit of consumers in the western countries. Which makes you think, just wtf is the us doing that emits that much carbon per capita?
But why would you control for population? So there are a vast number of Chinese who can't afford a large share of China's emissions, so what? What's your mindset here, that we have to determine the most guilty individual person and ignore governments? There may be lots of people in China but it's one government and it's emitting a lot, in absolute terms. Is Liechtenstein (population under 40,000) potentially a huge priority for us to consider in regard to tackling emissions? Their per capita figure could be enormous. You should not care even if it is, because in absolute terms it will be trivial.
To answer your question: transport.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector-s...
If you switch to China, this slice is taken over by manufacturing and construction.
Because the amount of changes that a society has to make in how it lives to get to net zero is determined by how much each person emits.
The average US person emits 15 tons CO2 every year (there is distribution about it). The average China person emits half that. So obviously the US has to make a larger change in the structure of society.
Of course, it is better to subdivide even further. One way that is popular is to estimate how much do super rich emit and what the average emit, and of course the super rich have to be reigned in a lot more than the average person.
That's not obvious at all. Suppose the difference in per capita emissions between country A and country C is that in country A they drive big cars and in country C they drive small ones. Well, both countries ought to stop using internal combustion engines. How is that a "larger change" for country A, just because they have larger cars?
And as for "reigning in" the super rich, what does that mean? You want to tax them more and ban yachts, perhaps? Do you think this sector is at all significant in real terms, in terms if the slice of actual effect these very few high individual emitters have on total emissions compared to general transport, power generation, industry and construction?
Focussing on any individual's carbon footprint is not the way. It's been tried since the 90s and it doesn't work, in much the same way that John Lennon didn't bring about world peace despite getting a large number of fans to agree that it sounded like a good idea. The problem there was that they didn't have the power to decide the matter. In the case of climate change, specific policies about fuel for power generation and transport can decide it. Taxing the rich is just a complete sideshow that probably happens to please you for unrelated reasons.
We are never actually going to get to zero carbon emissions. There are many industrial operations that will emit CO2. The hope is that we can plant enough trees that the sucked CO2 is equal to those non-replaceable emissions to get to net zero.
In your specific case of cars, the production of cars does emit CO2. And production of larger cars does emit more CO2. Whether the electricity used for them is from solar, wind or nuclear, there are emissions associated with the production of panels, wind turbines or nuclear power plants. Constructing and maintaining roads also emits CO2, and larger cars require thicker and broader roads. So, a country with smaller cars will emit less CO2 ceteris paribus. Hence it is indeed better if the average car size is smaller.
Or if people start owning fewer cars and take the bus instead. And of course more people in the large-car country will have to switch to the bus than in the small-car country for the same reduction in emissions.
You originally said "a larger change to the structure of society" is required if a country emits more carbon per person, and I said this was balls because America could be doing it in exactly the same structural way as China, only more of it. For another example, suppose China is exactly identical to America apart from having an extra 1 billion very poor people who emit no greenhouse gasses at all. Now is there any reason the burden of responsibility, or priority for change, falls on America instead of on that version of China? I say no, that would make no sense.
For example let's say we agree on 4 x 10^10 tons of CO2/year. There are around 200 countries, so each country gets 2 x 10^8 tons per year.
Under that each person in Liechtenstein could live a lifestyle that required 5 000 tons of CO2/year.
In the US each person could only live a 0.6 ton CO2 lifestyle, which would require each person on average to cut their CO2 by a factor of 25. That's around what they use in Zimbabwe today.
In China each person could only live a live a 0.14 ton CO2 lifestyle, and would have to cut emissions by a factor of almost 60 to do that. That's around what Ugandans use today.
But wait...what if the US holds a constitutional convention and reorganizes? It could dissolve and each of its 50 states could become an independent country, and those countries could form a strong trade and defense alliance by treaty to make it so that they effectively share the CO2 shares.
Under that the world has around 250 countries instead of 200, so the per country share drops to 1.6 x 10^8 tons per year, but the American Union collection of 50 countries together has shares totaling nearly 8 x 10^9 tons. The people of the American Union can now enjoy a 24 ton lifestyle which is about 60% more than they have now.
China could do the same with their 33 provinces. In that world the share per country is 1.4 x 10^8 tons and the 33 countries that form the Chinese Union would have 33 shares giving them 4.6 x 10^9 tons, or 3.3 tons per person.
But why stop there? China is pretty good at tackling big things, so instead of turning each province into a separate country and putting together a 33 country Chinese Union, why not make each prefecture a country and put together a 333 country Chinese Union?
In that world, with ~200 countries not in the American Union or Chinese Union, 50 American Union countries, and 333 Chinese Union countries the per country share is 6.3 x 10^7 tons. The Chinese Union would have 333 of those shares giving them 2.1 x 10^10 tons or 15 tons per person which is a current US-level amount.
The American Union would have 50 shares giving 3 x 10^9 tons or 9.6 tons per person.
The EU would have 3.8 tons per person.
Liechtenstein would have to make do with 1600 tons per person.
In this system any country can get a bigger share of the world's CO2 emissions budget by splitting and forming alliances among the newly formed countries.
The limit of this would be a world of thousands or even millions of micro-countries, and where the CO2 allowance per person is about the same in all of them.
That's why mathematically per capita is the correct way to allocate.
But it does, if "cares about" means "is affected by". This is about how you think action can be taken. The tired old premise is that action can be taken by raising the consciousness of individuals, raising awareness, guilt-tripping them in a sort of viral chain-letter way until everybody just decides "oh my gosh I must monitor the carbon footprint of everything I do because I don't want to be a bad person", and then we've all stopped emitting and we're saved.
But really it's controlled by government policy. The responsibility only lies with the individual in so far as they can control governments. It lies with governments in proportion to the share of emissions that government is responsible for via policies it could make.
Using more space, traveling further distances, and moving more mass is all it comes down to. In order of impact, it means detached homes, individual huge car and air transport, animal food products, and shipping things across oceans (aka things stamped with made in China).
Approximately no one is willing to give up these luxuries on a nation scale.
You can see the same thing if you look at the energy cost of food shipping: perishable goods like asparagus are shipped in refrigerated planes, and the added energy of shipping is huge, whereas bananas are shipped on cargo ships.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-transport-by-mode
For example
1. Governments.
2. In functioning democracies, voters.
And yes, production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
However Russia emits almost as much CO2 per capita as the USA, and Canada and Australia may be slightly worse than the USA.
China has larger CO2 emissions per capita than most EU countries, which is interesting. I'd like to see a breakdown of where that CO2 comes from. Is it manufacturing, agriculture, transport, domestic use or what?
So any solution to climate change that does not take China's emissions into account is doomed to fail just as much as one that doesn't take the US's emissions into account.
China has more than 4 times the population of the US so it would be reasonable to expect that they actually emit more than 4x the CO2 of the US. Your numbers show that they actually emit 'only' just more than twice the US, and bearing in mind that they are indeed the world's factory.
So your numbers show that the US (and Russia) are doing badly and that the EU is doing relatively well.
They also show that a global cut in CO2 emissions is and will remain extremely hard when combined with population and development targets (India emits very little compared to population, for instance).
China's per capita emissions have more than quadrupled over the same period, and are showing no signs of slowing down. At this rate it'll soon eclipse the US's per capita rate.
You mentioned India, which is a much better example of a low per capita rate.
The world simply cannot emit like the US do per capita.
China's emissions have increased because the country has been developing and Chinese are still quite poorer on average than Americans. India is still low because they are behind in terms of development and they don't (yet) produce for the world.
I am not sure what point you are making. My point is simply that population varies wildly per country so pointing the finger at China because they emit the most as a country is nonsensical. Emission per capita is a much better metric.
I am not sure there is any way to combine development and drastic reduction in emissions with 10 billion people on the planet, but I am sure that the US are doing worse than China when you do a valid comparison that must take population into account.
> Moreover, this happened while US manufacturing output remained fairly constant.
The issue there is that output is measured in dollar value, not raw volume or mass of stuff, which may be better correlated with emissions. Many intrinsically polluting and lower value industries have been outsourced to China with output imported.
So, no, even when you take population into account China is a bad emitter and not doing nearly enough to invest in decarbonising their economy in the same way the US and EU have.
Again, you also need to take into account that the US and EU have outsourced emissions to China, which needed that to develop. Still the US emit a huge amount per capita so it's disingenuous so claim that China is a bad emitter, which feels like the US is trying too hard to deflect.
Claiming the US and EU ‘outsourced’ emissions to China is an overly simplistic view, and one that ignores the way China developed its own industry and targeted the developing world as a market for its goods long before US and EU companies outsourced en masse.
China now emits more than 60% as much per capita as the US, where thirty years ago it was more like 5%. In fact, China’s emissions have been so high in the past thirty years that their total emissions are now also up to more than half of all US emissions since 1850.
So, yes, China is a bad emitter and has already contributed more to global warming than anyone other than the US. What’s more, their emissions growth rate remains unsustainably high.
Also, none of what I’ve been saying is about deflecting blame from the US. It’s had a huge part to play in global warming too, and needs to do a lot more.
> China now emits more than 60% as much per capita as the US, where thirty years ago it was more like 5%
China was very poor and has been developing... It does not mean that they aren't doing a lot, and probably more than the US do.
> In fact, China’s emissions have been so high in the past thirty years that their total emissions are now also up to more than half of all US emissions since 1850.
Chinas has more than 1.4 billion people now while the US have 333 million and 23 million in 1850... Still China will never reach the emissions per capita level that the US did in the past.
> China is a bad emitter and has already contributed more to global warming than anyone other than the US
That's a highly disingenuous claim, again ignoring population and development, as well as size of global economy.
If you keep ignoring that China has a massive population and is still a developing country, with inhabitants still poorer on average than Europeans and Americans then there cannot be an honest discussion.
What's the US' "excuse" for emitting more than even the EU per capita? They have the best technology and unlimited funds. But, oh yes, it's China who's the bad emitter...
Regarding per capita figure the thing to keep in mind is that China used to be very poor and has been developing. Per capita figures therefore started very low and have been increasing rapidly with development, and are still much lower than the US's. This is also why India's figures are quite low.
Regading overall figures, obviously then what is relevant is the overall population, as explained.
Can't repeat the same thing over and over if you refuse to engage, so good night and good luck.
The point I’m trying to make is that I’ve been basing all my points on per capita emissions, not overall figures, and that China’s per capita figures are no longer much lower than those of the US and within just a few years at the current rate they will eclipse US figures.
That means that it’s not just about them developing, it’s also about them developing in an extremely emissions-heavy way, to a point where if nothing is done there’s a possibility that before long China will have per capita emissions several times larger than that of the US. Of course, given their population that also means their overall emissions will be huge, but that’s a separate thing.
It's sus to ascribe countries as bad emitters because they're developing higher QoL instead of choosing to be stuck as subsistence shitholes with low per capita emissions. The only way for countries to stay at subsistence/developing per capita emissions is to stay susbsistent/developing. Of course some wierd people think that's fine.
A fairer description is PRC's moderate per capita emissions are converging with US high per capita emissions as QoL improves because average PRC citizen wants to live as well as average citizens of high consumption developed economies. But due to various physical constraints - less square footage per, less flying, less car ownership per capita due to density, PRC unlikely to pass US per capita - they're simply not setup to enable car centric, house+lawn levels of consumption. But PRC converging with west in QoL = PRC still primed for more catchup consumption = per capita emissions still has room to climb, while transitioning energy mix tries to sustain growth via greener methods of generation.
Meanwhile US's process of "decarbonization" = also becoming net oil exporter and largest lng exporter, the latter with evidence to be much more poluting than coal due to leaky infra. Which BTW adds, ~3 tons co2 per capita to US produced emissions, which single handly negates last 15 years of US "falling" emissions. Which BTW should be accounted for US emissions just like PRC exports are calculated in PRC emissions, but conveniently isn't. Meanwhile, PRC upgrading domestic coal to be cleaner, ceased construction of coal plants abroad, is net exporting green energy. That's without bringing population growth/decline trends. US adding 1.5m to US tier of emissions is like adding 12m Indians per year.
At current rates, China is going to be a larger per capita polluter than the US ever was, because it’s still choosing the quick, cheap, and dirty approach to so much of its industry including those focused only internally. As a result of poor central planning and incentives, it has built and then destroyed entire apartment blocks in cities across the country without them ever having been in use. Its per capita emissions rate is already higher than that of the EU average.
Nobody on here is saying that China or any other country shouldn’t develop. It’s expected that there’ll be a rise in per capita emissions as a result. But that doesn’t mean that China has the right to emit as much as it can just in the name of development, especially when so many lower carbon options exist.
Again, this isn’t a moral judgement, where adding focus to China means taking focus away from the US and letting it do what it wants. Nor is it a situation where we can or should give anyone a free pass just because of history. Instead, we’re in a situation where we’re collectively screwed unless we can reduce total emissions and China has to be an integral part of that reduction too. Just as the US has to be.
This presumes current rates holds, when rate is constrained by factors and levels off past certain thresholds of development, and inherent constraints limit PRC demands vs US. With geography/population/density constrains, average PRC household isn't going to average 2300+ sqft of space & 2 car household, so trend of PRC per capita emissions passing US not realistic extrapolation.
>poor central planning
Wasting a few 100 apartment blocks over decades (for corruption/wrong zoning) doesn't meaningfully adds to per capita emissions. It's a rounding error on scale of millions of normal housing upgrading/recycling/replacement cycle over time. Even currenty underutilized housing is mostly reflection of short term supply outstripping demand. PRC still has 300m people to urbanize and net short 100s millions of housing units. Upgrade housing also important in development, moving people from dilapidated huts to modern buildings requires emissions.
> Its per capita emissions rate is already higher than that of the EU average.
Catchup growth = pouring down 100 years worth of concrete + steel, aka generations of infrastructure. In that sense per capita emissions is a concession to developed countries, since real useful index is historic per capita emissions, aka how much energy was expended in totality to enable modern/developed levels of QoL. PRC simply very good at condensing all this grown in a few years, other developing countries will follow, but spread over time, with longer tail.
>can just in the name of development, especially when so many lower carbon options exist.
PRC emitted relative to tech available at time. They upgraded coal to clean coal. They jumped on electrifiction / renewables at scale when it was feasible to deploy at scale. Prior to that the tech didn't exist economically, nor at scale, and hence might as well not exist. They would have jumped on nuclear sooner if western contractors didn't shit bed. TLDR is cleaning energy didn't scale with PRC growth, one doesn't slow compounding growth and development because tech isn't ready because effects of growth > emissions.
>moral judgement
Choosing position that prioritizes emission over development and vice versa is moral choice since it prioritizes effects of climate change to effects of development. My position is development > climate always since second order effects of development (poverty alleviation) > emissions/long term health. My other position is climate change is anthropocene problem, earth doesn't care we die in ice age or fire ball. Anthropocene solutions to anthropocene problem = geopolitical compromises, not what's best for science/enviroment. And only metric world can realistically agree on is per capita metric, in which case lead emitters sets the standard for what's allowable, and if that level pushes everyone over the edge, then that's where we'll "fairly" go, because that's want's ultimately morally acceptable/feasible.