[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...