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> A more fair metric would be Co2 emissions/person and I’m getting We don't care about that notion of "fair": the cold hart truth is that China has 1.4 billon
by TacticalCoder 23d ago
> A more fair metric would be Co2 emissions/person and I’m getting
We don't care about that notion of "fair": the cold hart truth is that China has 1.4 billon people.
Another way to put it: China has one billion more people than there are in the US.
Or another way to put it: 4.1x more people.
Which means China is emitting nearly 3x more Co2 than the US.
Our only hope is that China is using coal and fossil fuels only has a mean to sustain its insane growth while they transition to solar and nuclear (which they also do, at an amazing speed).
Hillbillies and redneck with their gigantic pick-up trucks in the US are really the least of worries.
- mitthrowaway2 23d agoSolution to save the environment: China should separate out Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia as separate independent countries. Hong Kong and Macao too. And then split north-south so that Shanghai and Beijing become their own capitals. Continue this process and eventually the population and emissions of each individual country will be low enough that they can be ignored, thus solving the problem once and for all.
- edflsafoiewq 23d agoThat is the opposite of what GP said. The point is only the total emissions matter, the climate does not care about "fair" allocations over either people or nation-states.
- tzs 23d agoThat's a pointless point, because any system to actually control emissions requires allocating them to nation-states, because it is nation-states that actually enforce things on people.
- onraglanroad 22d agoNo, it's exactly what the GP said: per capita doesn't matter, it's just the size of the country. So split the country up fixes the problem. Yes, it's dumb, but you agreed with it...
- piva00 23d agoThe EU has more people than the USA but emits 1/3 of the USA's, what's the exceptionalist excuse for that?
- toddy_flogsit 23d agowell, yes we're overfed and over-commercialized. But we also vastly out build, grow and produce Europe. (and you have more people)
- piva00 23d agoIf using simple metrics like GDP growth, I'm more in the camp of Paul Krugman's argument[0] that such comparisons with simple naïve metrics are insufficient to analyse it. I agree the USA has grown more steadily than the EU and the American software/tech industries have a leg up but the devil is in the details. I travel a lot for work to the USA and I do not experience what this GDP growth has brought to the US in the past 10-15 years: infrastructure in general is worse (worse airports, worse roads, etc.), urban life is worse, rural life is worse, quality of food is worse. [0] https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/europe-v-america-whos-really-winning https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/europe-v-america-whos-rea...
- toddy_flogsit 19d ago[flagged]
- drnick1 23d ago[flagged]
- piva00 23d agoDid I offend you by asking a question?
- phartenfeller 23d agoWe have a meltdown, maybe we can extract clean energy from here