The hard part is international collaboration. Getting China and India on board has been a non-starter so far, and they're far and away the largest contributors.
Because supposedly it is self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The amount of emissions correlate strongly to that pursuit of happiness at least for now — you only see extremely low per-capita emissions in extremely underdeveloped countries.
Meanwhile, “all miles driven are created equal” said no one ever.
I am not sure that 'dividing' amount of pollution a given geographical region produces, on to number of people there -- is the only righteous and effective measure of international accountability).
In my view, measuring delta in total greenhouse gasses produced, would a better measure for international accords, and their subsequent corruption-free enforcement.
This is why I brought the pollution-per-mile vs pollution-produced analogy.
With regards to > "The amount of emissions correlate strongly to that pursuit of happiness at least for now..."
I think, you are also averaging out to-per-capita that, might not be appropriate...
Say there is energy-demanding and mineral demanding manufacture process, that causes deforestation, pollutes rivers, mows down beautiful mountains to get coal, produces lots of green house gasses.
You are claiming that this benefits, at least, economically, 'every' per-capita person on that country.
But if same manufacture used more renewable energy, and produced more expensive goods. Would the 'per-capita' be worst off?
Perhaps it would not be. Right?
In other words, we really need to measure what that manufacture is doing.
And that's why I think measuring changes in pollution (due to changes in policy of a given country), and changes in preservation of natural habitats -- is a much more effective way to measure policies of governments.
Another way to look at it is this way:
Performance indicators should be relevant to the individuals or institutions that are actually accountable for the execution of what's being measured.
In this case, we are measuring government policies, not individuals. Therefore dividing per capita, should not be used as 'first-order' measure.
What does that have to do with anything? You've completely ignored the concept of what "per capita" even means in this context. Person B could be in Country 1 with low per capita emissions, or Person B could be in Country 2 with high per capita emissions. It doesn't change the fact that on average, individual people in Country 2 emit more CO2 emissions than people from Country 1...
Also, deciding to not do something positive because other people are still doing something negative somewhere else is a shitty argument.
>"
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Not at all. Both signed up to the Paris -- and previous agreements, but unfortunately Paris is a pretty weak, almost voluntary agreement that gives particular leeway to developing nations.
Up to and including Kyoto they differentiated between developed and developing world. That differentiation was lost at Paris so the developed world could evade their "historical responsibility" (a key phrase of the differentiation). The intent was, I think, that the developed world would assist via subsidy the developing world to shortcut past the mucky phase of fuel use. An intent that goes all the way back to the eighties, and has come and gone in terms of visibility. That would have cost actual money. Needless to say that didn't happen. Or come remotely close to happening.
> Getting China and India on board has been a non-starter so far
China is ahead of schedule in reducing its emissions. Consider also that being the first to switch to renewables or other energy sources means we develop technology to replace existing infrastructure that we can then export. The first-mover advantage on this is obvious.
I'm going to copy-paste a comment I wrote a year ago because I get tired of hearing this BS. As far as I can tell, "on board" is just code for "remain poor while we keep the status quo".
India and China both have leadership that acknowledge the existence of anthropogenic climate change and is taking active measures. That would seem like table stakes but unfortunately we live in a world where that's not a given.
India produces 20% of electricity from renewable sources, not including large hydro[1]. Including large hydro, it's 29%. In comparison, the US produces only 15% from renewable sources including hydro[2] which, of course, has lots of environmental costs before any energy generation begins. This is admittedly a meaningless factoid but still kind of cool - India has 5 of the 10 largest solar power stations in the world, more than any other nation.[5] The Delhi city government has made it mandatory for government and public institutions to install rooftop solar[6]. This is on top of a government program that provides subsidized loans for rooftop solar on factories.[7] There's plenty of other renewable energy, rainwater harvesting, and recycling programs at various levels of the Indian government - federal, state, and city. I'm not saying all of them will work (it's the government, after all) but it's solid effort, and hard cash being put in.
Gasoline costs USD 4.55/gal in Mumbai today[8] - compared to around USD 3.50 in California, which already has the highest gas prices in the continental US. Due to the lower average disposable income in India, this means motorists prioritize fuel economy over comfort, and even safety.
India's annual population growth rate is 1.10% - a shade above the global average of 1.09%[3]. It's also been steadily dropping for decades and that trend is expected to continue.[4] China's population growth rate is 0.41% - lower even than the US.[3]
The only way India and China can keep from increasing their emissions is by stopping their economic progress. This would effectively keep their respective populations poor, undernourished, and lacking modern amenities such as healthcare, transportation, or entertainment. So what do you mean by "on board" exactly? What other shining exemplars of environmental rectitude can one point at to persuade India and China? What other nations have made, or committed to make, similar lifestyle sacrifices?
Please don't copy/paste comments here. I know it's tempting on complex contentious topics, but it's not how conversation works, and HN threads are supposed to be conversations. Boilerplate is the extreme opposite of curiosity.
No, they aren't. India's per capita CO2 output is tiny. China's is middle of the road. Per capita is the only way we can talk about CO2, because otherwise we get true absurdities, like Denmark or Ireland being allowed to pollute as much as the US. (The world will not support 200 countries polluting ad much as the US.)
There's also a simple solution to getting trade partners on board. It's called a carbon tariff.
When talking about global action, you need to involve the political organizations of populations where effective action can be practically enacted. Per capita isnt as useful a measure as you think when talking about large scale change.
"doesn't need to do anything" is a qualifier that _you_ added, apparently based on a gross misunderstanding of the conversation. We're talking about defining an ideal target here, with deference paid to the fact that the status quo poses some inertia. If we're talking about an idealized frictionless vacuum, everybody would snap to the same emissions per capita, at the level required to forestall the negative effects of climate change. This would imply a substantial reduction of US emissions and perhaps an increase or small decrease in Indo-China emissions; increasing China to US levels doesn't make sense in any model, idealized or otherwise. Given that inertia means that the US reduction can't be immediate and drastic, it still suggests that mroe of the burden for emission reduction falls on the US than on India and China.
No, China emits more than the greener European countries so they should act, just like we should. The US being way worse is not an excuse for Europe or China to do nothing.
I also agree with this. Even greener European countries are not particularly close to a sustainable level of emissions.
China's per-capita output is a problem. But it's not the kind of problem where we can just point fingers at it, and using that as a justification to ignore the mess we're making. (As we range from 'just as bad' to 'much worse'.)
> Wouldn't it also mean India and china won't have to do anything for decades till they get to same per capita as USA ?
If the US does not reduce it's emissions, yes. (In China's case, it's emissions are currently per-capita similar to most of the EU).
This is a great argument for the US, and the EU to reduce their emissions, instead of sitting around, pointing fingers are China.
Again, if you aren't using per capita metrics, you will get absurd conclusions. If a country splits in half, does that mean it should be allowed to emit twice as much?
Because "middle of the road" isn't good enough. If we want to avoid disaster than the EU needs to cut emissions massively, and the US needs to cut even more.
The EU is in a much better position to cut emissions too: their cities are generally denser and have far better public transit than the US's sprawling cities and suburbs. All the EU needs to do is increase the price of auto fuel more to discourage private vehicle usage, and further build out their public transit systems.
The US is in a terrible position, however, because everything is car-based. It would help if they'd push for more dense development and extending public transit, but there's really no sign of that at all.
Per capita may not be the best metric. China’s population isn’t going to shrink any time soon. If the environment is the concern the total emissions seems like the appropriate figure.
Don’t see how that would make sense. Comparing the emissions of China vs that of Iceland just doesn’t make sense.
We can talk about total global emissions, but then bring it down to the total per capita contribution per country. e.g. China has 20% of the worlds population so are “allowed” 20% of the worlds total emissions.
Careful there. That would incentivize unscrupulous nations to breed vast populations and keep them barely alive in cages, just to be "allowed" more emissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Per capita carbon emissions of US are 8 times as of India and 2 times as of China. And which country is withdrawing from the Paris agreement?