Because China is a country with the third largest land mass with the second largest population in the world. But per capita, they produce half of what an American does.
2 things about this; the planet don’t care about per capita numbers - 52.2 is gonna drop that population real quick. I doubt that would even slow their ruling class down
Second fuck is America a bad comparision. Those 2 will race to a scorched earth quicker than a nuclear war ever could
Per capita numbers are very, very important: they tell us where the low hanging fruit are. The people emitting the most per capita should be pressured most heavily to reduce emissions, because they’re the ones who are polluting most unnecessarily.
In a perfect democracy perhaps, but in the world we live in the power is in the hands of very few. Id also argue there’s too much noise using it to represent unnecessary pollution, as a single person running a generator in antartica would be horrible per capita - but quite so necessary. Larger populations have the benefit of larger systems, thereby operating more efficiently. A country could also reasonably just triple their population to increase their pollution “quota”, cause money - and a system that can be that manipulated isnt that reasonable of a system.
Looking directly at pollution on the other hand is more like looking directly at what causes the problem (climate change), and minimizing centralized sources of it would have a much more noticable effect. Especially those that have a greater population to landmass ratio (thereby having less untouched human areas) and so less so a positive effect on greenhouse gas removal.
Let’s frame this in inequality terms. Suppose (not the real numbers) we have the top 1% emitting half the greenhouse gases to fuel their lifestyles, and the bottom 99% emit the other half. You’re saying we should focus equally on the two groups when looking for emissions reductions???
Except we’re also setting high temperature records in Canada.
Even with that, it still pisses me off when I hear my fellow Canadians (mostly from a certain province that exports fossil fuel) saying “why should Canada do anything when these other countries are worse”.
Ok, doesn’t change that we need a ton of heat in the winter. An average 1.5 C change doesn’t matter much when we have to heat from -20 to +20, a delta T of 40 degs.
Exactly, the world doesn't care. The average co2 footprint per person globally is around 5 tonnes and as we've noticed, that is way too much for our planet to handle, one estimate is that we would need to drop that to below 2.5 tonnes.
China at 7.5 per person is a lot closer to than Canada at 18, Australia at 17, US at around 15 or Russia at 12. EU on average is close at around 8 I believe.
No way canada’s that bad? Thats a perfect example then cause were mostly hydroelectric, just empty as ass (an example I used to the other person is imagine the per capita numbers of an artic exploration group, probably horrible but we could never visit the artic again and still be boiling in superpowers pollution)
"Per capita" means per person, it has nothing to do with being mostly unpopulated. And it sure is that bad.
The exact figures differ slightly depending on who you ask, my source was Worldometer.
Whoops shoulda been a little more specific, I meant because most gas based generators arent nearly efficient as coal based plants (which aint as efficient as nuclear…) in terms of emissions to energy. That added on the fact that they’re probably not designed for sub zero temps and you end up with a horrible per capita (probably, I don’t have any actual numbers to back this up).
Ngl im not too great at expressing my whole thought processmao
Oh we’re pretty bad. Cold winters we need lots of heat. Big houses. Mostly car dependent inner infrastructure. Lots of distance for goods to travel and we still use trucks for it. BC and Quebec may have lots of hydro but that’s not the rest of the country.
It's not ignoring the problem, you are complaining that we are running out of food because that group of a billion people are eating too much when you have over twice as much food on your own plates, and saying the solution is that they should be forced to eat even less.
It is ignoring the problem. I’m complaining about the massive amounts of carbon China is pumping out and getting worse every year and you’re making excuses.
Classic tragedy of the commons. It’s no one fault. Everyone is doing it. Blah blah blah. None of this is lowering GHGs.
And if we split China into three smaller countries with a population of 450 million each, then those would only produce 3/4th the Co2 of USA each putting USA in the number one spot and solve climate change? China currently pollutes the most overall simply because it has the (second) biggest population, and that makes it look bad in the "per country" statistic. But per person they pollute less than half of what someone from the US, Australia or Canada do.
Another extreme example is India, it is on spot 3 on overall emissions, which means it produces a fuckton of CO2, even though per capita the figure is 1.89 - one person from the US produces as much CO2 emissions than 8 people from India. They are already well below the global average (~5 tons per person) and even below the suggested target to counter climate change - 2.5 per person.
Interesting. Apple & Amazon’s defense argument of ‘stop counterfeits’ essentially contains the subtext of ‘because it was expensive to us, not the consumer’ - considering if you received a counterfeit product it likely wasn’t a hassle to get Amazon to refund it (and presumably by that time the seller had jogged on, and Amazon couldn’t get their money back).
France also saw record-low nuclear output as state-owned utility EDF (EDF.PA) repairs reactors affected by stress corrosion.
This is the reason for the increase, but also the 10% they announced is way less than the French energy commission recommended as well. They were recommending a 74.5% increase.
North Korea, which test fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week, condemned the NCG on Monday for “openly discussing the use of nukes”
That’s rich coming from NK. As if they don’t threaten this on a quarterly basis.
That would’ve entailed a full on war with China. Which some people - most notably MacArthur - were ok with. I think his plan involved nuking as much of the PLA as possible.
Personally, I think we should’ve done some version of Operation Unthinkable and eliminated the USSR. Alas.
corporate debt defaults are the burden of the banks, which makes them unable to approve loans, which kills off the smaller regional banks and also hopes for corporate growth, so jobs too.
But we all gonna continue to live in denial that global warming doesn’t exist or isn’t significant yet. How bad is this going to be in 5-10 years time with the current rate at which humans are polluting the atmosphere lmao.
I try to focus on being happy and living my own life. These things are civilization level issues, and last 50 years have shown the civilization’s fundamental incapability to face the issue, let alone attempt to solve it at any meaningful scale.
IMO there is nothing wrong with attempting to minimize one’s own carbon footprint, but the futile attempt to push for more significant changes will just lead to disappointment
reuters.com
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