Seems like a deliberate effort not to mention it in the title and abstract, despite the text clearly defining "East Asia" as "mainly China".
Also major contributor to plastic pollution in the ocean (from rivers) and #1 in CO2 emissions. All the while western economies hurt themselves and consumers in vain efforts instead of being serious about the issue and confronting its major contributor.
https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1lvoi0x/theres_a...
Meanwhile, US leadership is on team "Drill baby, drill"
India: 1.2 tonnes CO2/person/year.
China: 7.2 tonnes CO2/person/year.
Russia: 10.1 tonnes CO2/person/year.
Canada, Australia: 12.9 tonnes CO2/person/year.
USA: 16.5 tonnes CO2/person/year.
A complete picture of blame absolutely should include per-capita, ultimate use (who buys the end product of China's emissions), and historical contributions. However, to ignore China's absolute , ongoing contribution as the world's largest emitter (by far: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...) is clearly an error.
2023 totals:
China: 11.90 billion tons, trending up
USA: 4.91 billion tons, trending down
Unless you can make a good argument that some humans have a natural or divine right to a bigger share of whatever total worldwide emissions budget we decide we can accept any kind of per country instead of per capita base allocation [1] make no sense.
This can be seen by considering what happens if countries split. A large country that is over their allocation in a per country system can simply split into two or more smaller countries, with the split designed so that each of the new countries has about an equal fraction of the former country's emissions.
This results in no change in the total worldwide emissions, but now that set of people that were before over their total allocation and high on the list of people that need to make big changes now are all in countries under their allocation and in the "should do something about it eventually but no need for big changes now" group of countries.
If they are clever about how they split the original large country into smaller countries they can immediately make free trade treaties and travel treaties between them that effectively make a common market with free travel like much of Europe now has so the split into multiple countries doesn't even change life much for the citizens of the new countries.
Whatever countries have now moved to the top of the "need big changes now" list because of this now have incentive to split, and so on.
[1] By base allocation I mean whatever share they would be allocated in a world with no trade. Actual allocations need to take into account people emitting more because they are making/growing things for other people which reduces the emissions directly attributable to those other people.
A useful measure should not be affected by where we happen to draw political boundaries on our maps.
Outside that thought experiment it actually is useful, and that's why we have data showing that China leads, by far, in producing emissions. By the way, they lead in methane and nitrous oxide as well -- it isn't just carbon dioxide.
One property a useful measure of something undesirable (like CO2 emissions) should have is that if you identify the country that is doing the worst by that measure, and they were to change so that their economy works like that of the second worst country and their people live a lifestyle nearly identical to the people of the second country, that should improve the thing being measured.
Total by country fails at that. If China were to change so that they are basically a clone of the US economy and lifestyle their emissions would go way up.
Conversely, if the US were to change to be a China clone that would result in a big decrease in total emissions.
If you want to suppose those these two countries' populations changed lifestyles, I can also entertain that argument. You'd want to consider the economic reasons why one produces the emissions it does right now, and then suppose how that changes. In such a case, who is purchasing China's manufacturing output, and who is now purchasing that of the US?
Ignoring the world's largest and fastest-growing source of emissions simply because its per-capita rate is lower is a distraction from solving the actual problem.
It's an enticing "what if," but does not reflect the reality of the real data we have today. That data says China is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Now, yes, if we consider just China, then that being a major contributor to world CO2 emissions does imply that if we are to have total emissions under some total global rate, then, well, the total emissions from China need to be below that rate, certainly.
However, it seems a hard ask to try to get China to put stricter per-capita limitations on themselves than we are willing to endure ourselves?
Now, if the higher population places reduced their emissions and the lower population places stayed the same, that might be sufficient, but it also seems a bit, free-riding for those lower population areas?
Also, yeah the consumption of the goods produced seems pretty relevant.
It is especially a hard ask when you consider that because of the longevity of CO2 in the atmosphere there is more US/Europe CO2 in the atmosphere currently than there is Chinese CO2.
The US and Europe spent well over 100 years massively emitting in order to build up the levels of prosperity they now enjoy. If everyone else that wants prosperity tries to follow that same path it will be disastrous.
The only way to give every country a chance to reach a decent level of prosperity without using a a disastrous amount of fossil fuels is for (1) countries that achieve prosperity to rapidly and drastically cut their emission by switching to renewable energy, and (2) the prosperous countries provide subsidies for renewables to the countries that are trying to become prosperous so many of the latter can skip much of the "fossil fuel our way to prosperity" phase and go more directly to the prosperous renewal energy powered country endgame.
> Also, yeah the consumption of the goods produced seems pretty relevant.
In a fair system it is relevant, but as an adjustment after population. A fair system would start with the amount of total annual emissions that we decide (somehow) we need to keep under as a world, divide that by the number of people, and then assign each country that quotient times there population as their annual emission allowance.
If a country emits more than that they would have to get some other country to give them some of that country's emission allowance. That could be incorporated into international trade by making it so outsourcing production of something to another country requires you to provide that other country with enough of your emission allowance to cover the making of that thing.
I do enjoy the back and forth on these points, though.
I'll address the per-capita figures again, as it's still being lawded, but it is misguided. China's per-capita CO2 emissions are not only multiples higher than India's but have also surpassed those of the European Union. China's high emissions are a direct result of its chosen path of industrialization, pursued for its own economic ambitions.
Regarding historical responsibility -- a point I've already agreed should be part of a complete picture ("historical contributions" above): Crucially, this is happening in an era with known consequences and technological alternatives. The West industrialized over a century without access to modern, cost-effective renewables. China, by contrast, is making a deliberate choice to build out its fossil fuel infrastructure today, fully aware of the climate impact and with cleaner technologies readily available.
This brings us to the original topic of this thread, which is aerosols. China is demonstrating the capability to scrub its emissions, but it is choosing only to clean up the pollutants that have immediate, local health impacts. This reveals a clear policy of prioritizing national benefit over the global necessity of reducing greenhouse gases.
China has higher emission, because China has higher number of factories. The factories produce stuff. Where do all that stuff go? And for whom are all that stuff produced?
Not entirely China, or Africa, or India. A vast amount of that stuff flows to... the West.
So, if the West chooses to reduce its consumption significantly, the CO2 emissions of China will go down.
The consumers have to take the blame. It's as clear as that. And the West should fund climate-resilient infra for people and green tech for China and India and Vietnam. Because it is to West that stuff goes. But that's another issue. It is because there is demand in the West, China produce stuff.
If every American buys only one pair of shoes and a couple of new tshirts every year, and not more, and buys a smartphone after using one for 4 years, not less, the CO2 emission of China will go down.
> ultimate use (who buys the end product of China's emissions), and historical contributions. However, to ignore China's absolute , ongoing contribution as the world's largest emitter (by far: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...) is clearly an error.
"Ultimate use" discusses consumption by the West. This fact does not exonerate China, as China directly causes the emissions in order to satisfy its economic ambitions, and profits from its _factual_ role as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. If China did not offer these exports, perhaps someone else would. But right now, it's China.
I also threw in "historical contributions" to throw you a bone. Nonetheless, right now, its China and China's emissions are, even still, increasing.
If you want to pass the buck to the West that's fine, but the reality is that China is producing more emissions than anybody else is, and it does it for the benefit of China at the expense of the planet.
Is it?
Chinese companies are doing it for the profit, no doubt. But the West's unsustainable consumption standards should share the blame. China only do this because the West buy. And Western companies shift their production to China for cheaper labour, mainly.
Many American companies are actually doing the polluting. Not only Chinese companies produce in China. So, in a world with blurry boundaries, please take into account the production of Western companies, in Chinese physical borders, and stuff that China export to the West.
It is China now, it will be India, too, some years into the future. Where you write from the third iPhone (produced in India) that you bought in the last two years, that India and China are to blame for the pollution, where your second big heavy car sits in the garage, the rare earth minerals for which were mined in China, for an American company, and a roomba cleans your floor (also produced in China), that reads "carbon-neutral". You just hear the bell, and someone delivers your pizza, who is a climate refugee from a small pacific island.
You are not to blame. China and India are polluting!
Your argument has now shifted to focus on consumer demand. Yet, even examination of this angle will reveal that China's state policies create the artificially low prices that fuel that consumption.
The issue isn't simply that "the West buys things." It's that China's government actively engineers this hyper-consumption as the Chinese economic policy.
The CSIS (link below) describes this as a system of "nonmarket policies" and "state-driven overproduction." This is accomplished through massive government subsidies that allow Chinese companies to operate at a loss and "dump" cheap goods onto the global market.
The "unsustainable consumption" you describe is, therefore, a direct response to a market deliberately distorted by China for the sake of its economic ambitions.
Furthermore, the CSIS article explicitly states that these dumping policies support China's "pollution-intensive" and "carbon-intensive" manufacturing.
All this is to show that the problem is not reducible to consumer choice, but more so a deliberate strategy by the Chinese state.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-...
Your figures are for who produces CO2 and nothing to do with pollution
So in the context of the article this thread is discussing CO2 and pollution are different.