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Comment by kleiba2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables.

Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries as having the highest CO2-equivalent emissions (in Mt):

    | China         | 5,565 |
    | United States | 1,737 |
    | India         | 1,395 |
    | Russia        |   536 |
    | Japan         |   492 |

In comparison, the whole of the European Union (consisting of 27 individual countries, including Germany) is emitting 587 Mt.

All these numbers should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account. But even then, the whole of the EU does not fare too bad.

[0] https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electric...

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> should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account

Obviously, each individual should have a right to emit a certain amount of GHGs independently from the size of the country he happens to be born in. So the correct list is this (2024 data [1]). Quite surprising in places (e.g. the position of the UK, Australians emitting GHGs at the level of a petro-state, and Canadians too, well above the US).

    | Country              | MtCO2e/ capita
    | Qatar                | 54.54
    | Kuwait               | 38.14
    | Bahrain              | 35.13
    | United Arab Emirates | 25.62
    | Oman                 | 24.02
    | Saudi Arabia         | 22.79
    | Australia            | 22.26
    | Canada               | 19.76
    | Russia               | 18.02
    | United States        | 17.34
    | New Zealand          | 15.59
    | South Korea          | 12.83
    | Ireland              | 11.86
    | China                | 10.81
    | Poland               | 9.28
    | Belgium              | 9.15
    | Netherlands          | 8.35
    | Germany              | 8.17
    | Italy                | 6.32
    | Spain                | 6.16
    | Brazil               | 5.93
    | France               | 5.68
    | United Kingdom       | 5.63

1 - from here: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025?vis=ghgpop#emissi...

Germany is in Europe and the economist is about Europe, so it makes sense to look at high emitters in Europe, no?

Also, while it's important to look at the global picture, let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe. Poland is pretty bad too, especially in the winter. That's not China's or USA's fault.

> let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe

What... you know you could've looked this up pretty easily before posting?

https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/sites/default/files/styles/...

Both Berlin and Munich rank higher in terms of dirty air than the first polish city, Wroclaw: https://www.iqair.com/world-air-quality-ranking

That's LIVE data that will change hour to hour. When I opened it the list looked very different.

I provided you a map showing historical data collected over a year.

I did: https://aqicn.org/map/europe/

That's a real time map that will change by the hour. What I see now is probably not what you saw when you opened it.

Germany is singled out because decided to close their safe and well functioning zero emission power plants for no good reason, thus exploding their CO2 emissions.

Yeah, other emit more, but the rank stupidity of this environmental vandalism deserves the scorn it gets!

> thus exploding their CO2 emissions

Except their emissions have continued to go down.

Whether you count just electricity or economy wide.

And even before this "explosion" they were about half the US on per capita economy wide and now are less than half.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

I believe they are singled out in a feeble attempt by climate change deniers and fossil fuel boosters to discredit renewables. Which Germany played a pivotal role in kick-starting and which are currently saving the world.

The reason Germany gets singled out is because it was a massive policy misstep and highlights the shortsightedness of the environmental movement. It seems that they have changed their tune about it nuclear - but their entrenched efforts (and concerns in the 80s) killed the last 40 years of nuclear power - arguably inflaming our current CO2 crises by opening the doors wide open for Oil and Gas to fill the void.

In Germany add in that they then needed to rely on Russia to provide natural gas to fill in the void - which drove up the costs of power and made their manufacturing base a little less competitive.... Best intentions don't always prove to be good policy making. That's the TL;DR why Germany gets singled out.

Unlike the states, Germany is densely populated and does not have vast uninhabited areas. Where do you suggest should they store their nuclear waste? Germany has been looking for an appropriate place for the last 50(!) years and does not expect to come to a conclusion any time soon:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-scrap-deadline-...

In the mean time, they're keeping they're using the sites of their former nuclear power plants as temporary storage locations for the nuclear waste produced while the plants were still running.

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/What-now-for-Germany-s-re...

On top of all that, there's new challenges like this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/urban-infrastructure/energy-infras...

Nuclear waste is a complete non-issue. The area you need to store it is tiny and you do not at all need vast uninhabited areas for it.

Right. That's why 50 years of searching has not been enough in Germany.

That's what happens when you have a "green" movement intentionally spreading FUD around nuclear waste, yes.

It becomes a local politics issue.

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