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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

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.

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