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Comment by mdeeks | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the places where per capita doesn't matter as much as total emissions. We have one planet. The yearly total and cumulative matters the most.

China is by far the leading emitter. Over double of the US as of 2023 (latest available data I can find). China's emissions also aren't falling, they are skyrocketing. The US emissions ARE falling.

The US dominates in cumulative, which is essentially the measure of the total damage done to the planet. The US is doing something about it though. Yearly emissions have been dropping since 2007.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions

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Per capita most definitely matters. Every human is equal, there is no reason why one human has the right to emit much more than another. If we go by your reasoning, then all developing countries should figure out how to raise living standards without consuming more resources so the Americans don’t have to reduce theirs.

You are incorrect that China isn’t doing anything to lower its impact. It’s emissions would be much much much worse for the standard of living increases it achieved without investments in clean energy and EVs, tech that it is exporting abroad to the benefit of the world and to the dismay of America’s petro dollar dependence.

With such thinking, I now get why the rest of the world is beginning to hate America so much.

I didn't say China isn't doing anything. They are rolling out a mind boggling amount of clean energy right now. More than any other country by far. It's honestly incredible scale. It unfortunately isn't keeping up with their emissions though. The data is from 2023. It's very possible that in the last two years China has been able to stabilize emission growth.

I actually disagree a bit on the first part. I think developing countries have a right to have higher per capita emissions as they raise their standard of living and economy where they can get to the point of widely adopting clean energy.

I visited Beijing in April and it was much cleaner than it was before, electric vehicles everywhere, but people were also much richer, before a car was some sort of luxury and now it was just something you could get if you could find a place to park it. It’s hard to describe.

The o the thing to consider is that China isn’t really a full on consumption economy yet, that they develop a lot of infrastructure and make a lot of stuff for export, all that would be counted in per capita emissions even if it wasn’t to the benefit of a per capita member. The infrastructure building is going to slow down someday (like it did in Japan), China should seriously consider its exports next (especially rare earth refining which is really dirty and resource intensive).

Why wouldnt per capita matter? By that logic, you are saying it would be OK for Tuvalu to emit the same amount as the US?

Or actually, if per capita doesn't matter. Then China could fracture into 10 separate nations, and their output would sudenly be negliable?

Qatar emits FAR more than the US per capita, but the total emissions are extremely small. The impact on the climate is tiny comparatively.

Per captia doesn't matter.

> Then China could fracture into 10 separate nations, and their output would sudenly be negliable?

Don't you see the argument goes both ways? If the US merge with a few Africa countries, does it count as an "improvement" in regard of carbon emission?

> If the US merge with a few Africa countries, does it count as an "improvement" in regard of carbon emission?

Yes? I fail to see what your point is?

But seems both unworkable and likely to fail/lose its positive effect in less than a decade anyway.

In the "we only have one planet" angle, I think it's worth considering that China is not just burning coal for domestic purposes for fun. The fossil fuel consumption is an input to some output, a lot of that going abroad.

If China is the factory for all of these products sold in the US (and elsewhere of course), then isn't China just accounting for even more US emissions?

In that sense, some sort of eco-Trump could put all the tariff money into green tech or something, to balance out the exporting of emissions.

Though to be fair, I gotta imagine that... a lot of chinese emissions are purely for domestic purposes.

That’s a really great point. Maybe their emission curve is what matters. It’s the measure of if they are investing enough into reducing emissions despite their production needs.

The thing is it's not _their_ production needs if they are the factory of the world.

If the US put a 1000% tariff on Chinese goods tomorrow, emissions in China would likely go down a decent amount, right? But is that an indicator of their production needs? Or the US's consumption patterns?

Not that this is some bilateral thing, there's a lot of people buying a lot of stuff from many places. Just thinking about a very simple example, and how I would like to see quantification on this front, but I don't know how doable it really is.

Theres going to be a very entertaining set of mental gymnastics people will start doing once China's emissions growth peaks and starts falling compared to the US. They're building a lot of renewables, a lot of nuclear plants and are very obviously tooling up to replicate fusion from whoever nails it.

Whereas the US is trying to increase its fossil fuel industry and cancelling renewable projects.

They aren't just building "a lot" of renewables and nuclear, they are building an absolutely mind boggling amount of it. Last year it was more than the rest of the world combined!

Who cares about mental gymnastics. It's a win for literally everyone and I hope you ca see it that way instead. Competition is good. It drives others to keep up.

Despite what the current US govt wants, the economics of solar and other renewables will drive it. Worst they can do is slow it down a bit.

>If China is the factory for all of these products sold in the US (and elsewhere of course), then isn't China just accounting for even more US emissions?

China can't have it both ways, they are glibly blaming the rest of the world for their emissions while reforesting due to importing timber from rest of the world illegally.

> The Environmental Investigation Agency says: "The immense scale of China's sourcing [of wood] from high-risk regions [of the world] means that a significant proportion of its timber and wood product imports were illegally harvested." And research by Global Witness last year said there were "worrying" levels of illegality in countries from which China sources more than 80% of its timber.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54719577

I'm not talking about China's position, but thinking about texture of the emissions reductions in the rest of the world.

It's probably fairly unknowable what percent of emissions are for products that will be exported back out from China, but I think it's reasonable to say that when I buy some random wooden table from China and import it into Australia (for example), that I am at least somewhat responsible for those emissions, even if per-country emissions data doesn't reflect that!

I don't think this is some free pass for Chinese ecological behavior overall. My general hypothesis has been that at least some part of emissions reductions in the US and Europe are due to outsourcing. I just don't know how much of it is that.

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