[danhor]

> It's frustrating to live in Canada and be told we're the biggest problem in the world with our 2% of all emissions.

It's frustrating to live in china and told we're the biggest problem in the world, even we're responsible for less than 15% of carbon in the atmosphere. Wealthy countries like Canada and the US have profited from blowing carbon in the atmosphere over centuries and got wealthy from it, but now refuse to lower their emissions and blame us for wanting to get rich too.

It's all a question of framing.

[evandale]

> Wealthy countries like Canada and the US have profited from blowing carbon in the atmosphere over centuries and got wealthy from it

It was done at the scale of 30m and 300m populations, not a population 1.5b so it's hardly a fair comparison.

We have cleaner methods now, and my province doesn't even have any coal plants left. Our energy costs are through the roof because of that effort to save the planet. Meanwhile China continues to pollute more and more yoy, undoing any progress the rest of the world makes, at a mind boggling scale using outdated technology with no regard for the rest of the world.

[lambertsimnel]

> It was done at the scale of 30m and 300m populations, not a population 1.5b so it's hardly a fair comparison.

I think the idea is to compare countries' per-person impact. Otherwise, a country as populous as China is being held to a higher standard. How else should we compare countries?

[evandale]

Per-person statistics mean literally nothing when we're talking about a global problem that doesn't care about man-made boundaries.

edit: to elaborate, if I was allowed to immigrate to China I'd lower my per-capita emissions overnight and be a better citizen in the world. Or if Canada allowed mass immigration and tripled our population our per-capita would drop like a rock. Except I highly doubt it works that way and would solve climate change...

[lambertsimnel]

> Per-person statistics mean literally nothing when we're talking about a global problem that doesn't care about man-made boundaries.

As the climate doesn't care about man-made boundaries, isn't that all the more reason gauge emissions on a per-capita basis, without reference to borders?

> to elaborate, if I was allowed to immigrate to China I'd lower my per-capita emissions overnight and be a better citizen in the world. Or if Canada allowed mass immigration and tripled our population our per-capita would drop like a rock. Except I highly doubt it works that way and would solve climate change...

If migration could lower per-capita emissions as you describe, wouldn't that count in favour of that migration? (Of course, we also ought to consider any variation in per-capita emissions both in locations with net immigration and in locations with net emigration.) Maybe economies of scale help explain lower per-capita emissions in some locations (but not necessarily at national level).

[evandale]

> As the climate doesn't care about man-made boundaries, isn't that all the more reason gauge emissions on a per-capita basis, without reference to borders?

How do you do that? Measuring per-capita can't be done without drawing a border somewhere. Split it up by income?

> If migration could lower per-capita emissions as you describe, wouldn't that count in favour of that migration?

I pointed out how absurd that was, not that it was a good idea.

[lambertsimnel]

>> As the climate doesn't care about man-made boundaries, isn't that all the more reason gauge emissions on a per-capita basis, without reference to borders?

> How do you do that? Measuring per-capita can't be done without drawing a border somewhere. Split it up by income?

Possibly by income, but there are other options. Other than being impractical (and possibly suggesting individuals are freer to vary their emissions unilaterally than they actually are), we could in theory actually measure individual emissions. How about measuring per-capita emissions regionally, and with regions sub-divided by population density?

[ForHackernews]

> It was done at the scale of 30m and 300m populations

In other words, Canada and the US were even worse polluters with their small populations.

[josephcsible]

> we're responsible for less than 15% of carbon in the atmosphere.

This isn't true. In 2020, out of 34.81 billion tons of CO2 emitted from fossil fuels, 10.67 billion tons of it came from China. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

[wmorgan]

The GP said CO2 “in the atmosphere” meaning that if you count all the industrialization in the 1800s and 1900s then China doesn’t look so bad.

[josephcsible]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhou... says "Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years." So isn't most of the CO2 emitted from so long before China became the world's worst polluter no longer in the atmosphere?

[wmorgan]

Sure, it’s just a different frame: “you developed doing this thing. Now you’re saying we can’t do that same thing.” Why should The West “get credit” for the ocean’s CO2 dissolution capacity just because they industrialized earlier? Either way, we have to lift everyone out of poverty. Again, just a different way of framing the problem.

[evandale]

They're not doing the same thing though! They're doing it on a massively bigger scale and damaging the planet way more today than developed countries did in the past.

[josephcsible]

> Why should The West “get credit” for the ocean’s CO2 dissolution capacity just because they industrialized earlier?

That's why I originally compared emissions in 2020 rather than emissions remaining in the atmosphere. You can't have it both ways.

[evandale]

This page has another thing that pisses me off so much about the per-capita emissions and how Canada gets ripped into that so hard. These paragraphs right here:

> The world’s largest per capita CO2 emitters are the major oil producing countries; this is particularly true for those with relatively low population size. Most are in the Middle East: In 2017 Qatar had the highest emissions at 49 tonnes (t) per person, followed by Trinidad and Tobago (30t); Kuwait (25t); United Arab Emirates (25t); Brunei (24t); Bahrain (23t) and Saudi Arabia (19t).

> However, many of the major oil producers have a relatively small population meaning their total annual emissions are low. More populous countries with some of the highest per capita emissions – and therefore high total emissions – are the United States, Australia, and Canada. Australia has an average per capita footprint of 17 tonnes, followed by the US at 16.2 tonnes, and Canada at 15.6 tonnes.

Give me a break! How do Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Brunei, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia get designated as a major oil producing countries but Canada is left out?

Canada produces more oil than all of those countries except for Saudi Arabia and the USA: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country...

I thought "Ok maybe per-capita oil production isn't significant so that's why Canada was lumped in with the US and Australia". Nope! Canada isn't on the same scale as the oil producing countries per-capita for oil, but Canada does better per-capita than Trinidad (who is considered an oil-producing nation), USA, Australia, and China: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-prod-per-capita?time=...

Why doesn't Canada get any credit for their energy production? Canada generates a wild amount of energy from clean sources and nobody in the world comes close to touching Canada: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/canada?country=QAT...