[ethagknight]

I was hoping to see a comment like this. These sorts of “global collaborations” seem to always end with the US carry all the water, and the goal from the other countries perspective is to throttle the US. Like the Paris Accords.

[JoshTriplett]

> and the goal from the other countries perspective is to throttle the US. Like the Paris Accords.

Which is not inherently a bad thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

[etiennebausson]

Interesting dataset.

It would be a lot fairer to display tons of CO2 per inhabitant I think.

And that's before taking into account imported CO2.

[rishav_sharan]

Something like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

[brooke2k]

Climate change isn't driven by per-inhabitant CO2 emissions. It's driven by total CO2 emissions, of which the US outputs 12% per year.

[tock]

Climate change isn't driven by human defined borders either. It's driven by total CO2 emissions. If a per-capita rate is non sensical then border based emissions are even more non sensical. Greenland only emits 0.001% of the total. Greenland is 12000x a better country than the US wow. This is exactly why per-capita is used.

[im3w1l]

Yeah and this is clearest when you consider federations. Imagine if you count the US as 50 separate countries, suddenly they are much more climate friendly! That's of course absurd.

[mulmen]

Climate change isn’t driven by borders but energy policy is defined within them.

[tock]

And no policy is gonna willingly reduce energy consumption which is directly co-related with QOL when other countries have much higher per-capita consumption. Politically humans need fairness.

[hansvm]

But the reason emissions happen is for per-inhabitant benefits. It's a very reasonable idea [0] to set a per-inhabitant goal and criticize countries exceeding that threshold (which the US would still fail at, but I'm arguing against the metric itself rather than US faults).

Take your position to something of an extreme -- the Vatican could open up 200 coal power plants for its holy Bitcoin operations and still be sufficiently less impactful to CO2 than the US that nobody would target them during climate talks. Rephrased from the other direction, each US citizen would blow their CO2 budget by buying a shirt per decade to get down to the Vatican's levels.

That's a common mental failure mode, analogous to the sorites paradox. Countries are made up of many small actors and decisions, and pretending otherwise is unlikely to help you achieve your goals.

[0] Mostly -- transitive effects like one country generating all the goods another country uses are harder to account for. Assuming we could measure perfectly though...

[Spooky23]

In context of the United States, there are a small number of actors that stand to lose billions to renewables.

I live in the Northeast. Solar reduced my grid demand by 40%. That translates to a full recoup of the investment in 60-65 months with subsidy, 100-110 without. The unsubsidized payback period is 1/3 of the projected useful life of the panels.

You know it’s a good idea because opponents big argument is safety of rooftop installers and future workers disposing of solar panels, topics that these folks DNGAF about in the least.

[jandrewrogers]

12% is quite low considering that the US is responsible for >20% of global industrial output.

[gruez]

Not really, by that metric Europe still comes out ahead.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity

[jandrewrogers]

Of course, Europe has relatively little carbon intensive industry. The US is the world's largest producer of oil, beef, and other things with an intrinsically high carbon footprint. The carbon intensity of industry is a byproduct of geography and geology.

Europe has a relatively high carbon footprint per unit of output for things like animal husbandry compared to the US, they just don't do enough of it for it to add up.

[nonethewiser]

You're kinda contradicting yourself. You're right that it's about absolute numbers. But then you use a percentage.

perhaps 12% for 5% of the global population is too high. But you dont want to relate it to population. Relating to number of countries is rather non-sensical. Some are big (by productivity, area, population, etc.), some are tiny.

[brooke2k]

Making it relative to countries is useful because that is the delination along which policy is made.

Making it relative to people, IMO, only serves to obscure the fact that the US/China/etc are by far the biggest producers of emissions.

Writing climate policy with them in mind makes more sense than pushing for somewhere like Monaco to reduce emissions, even if their emissions per person are high.

[nosianu]

How is that fair when a lot of industrial production was shifted to one region of the globe specifically? It would be impossible without a lot of guessing and estimations, producing questionable data, but you would have to include CO2 attributable to exports and imports.

Which is just too hard, and too open to change assumptions to fit a desired result.

Because in reality, much of the globe's economy is waaayyyyy too interconnected, and the arrows don't just point one way. Feedback loops without end.

That whole "this/that country..." just does not work, except to fill comment sections. The systems are global.

[gruez]

>It would be impossible without a lot of guessing and estimations, producing questionable data, but you would have to include CO2 attributable to exports and imports.

>Which is just too hard, and too open to change assumptions to fit a desired result.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45762344

No, it's pretty straightforward. Count where a given good is consumed rather then where it's produced. It has to be estimated, but that's also the case for territorial emissions or other economic figures like GDP, but we don't throw our hands up and say "well it's too hard and too prone to fudging so we might as well not bother".

>Because in reality, much of the globe's economy is waaayyyyy too interconnected, and the arrows don't just point one way. Feedback loops without end.

What "feedback loops" are you talking about?

>That whole "this/that country..." just does not work, except to fill comment sections. The systems are global.

Ok but surely you must recognize that the US, where the average person drives a pickup/SUV to work is emitting more carbon than something like India where the average person gets around by walking or using motorbikes? That's the concept that conversations like "US emits more carbon per capita" are trying to capture. "The systems are global" sounds like an excuse to continue driving a F-150 to work because of some spurious arguments about how hard it's do to do carbon accounting 100% accurately.

[gruez]

>And that's before taking into account imported CO2.

It doesn't really make much of a difference. For US specifically there's about a 10% difference.

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

[mulmen]

I believe the concept you are looking for is scope 3 emissions.

[tgma]

A good thing from whose perspective? From the perspective of US it would always be a bad thing. Why would you ever want to concede something and limit yourself without proportional concessions.

[deadbabe]

To grow “soft power”. Especially by agreeing to things you probably would have done anyway.

[renewiltord]

Soft power isn't a thing. As people have recently pointed out with the USAID situation: helping someone and then stopping the help is far worse than not helping at all. Therefore, soft power isn't power, it's actually more like soft debt. Every time you do charity, you add on to your moral obligations. The less charity you do, the fewer the requirements on you.

[mystraline]

Please.

Do you really honestly believe that the USAID spent $5M a year telling Sri Lankan journalists how to use non-gendered language?

That was a front for US-lead initiatives in a moderately opposing country. It was to funnel funds to destabilize what the USA didnt like.

And to be fair, good. The USA rested on its laurels for too long. Bout time they have to face the democracy they 'spread' is just fascism.

[renewiltord]

Certainly, and in fact no soft power operation can be distinguished from something like this (because a front would deliberately be disguised as a soft-power operation) which renders soft-power operations useless to develop soft-power. And when it is removed, one can either reasonably conclude that the underlying operation is no longer necessary or one could react with how it's worse that they took away something they promised.

In no case will anyone ever say "Well, I am not happy it is gone but I am grateful for all the work they put in to help out of a desire to be good guys" so soft power isn't a thing.

To be clear, I have no quarrel with you on the belief that they're fronts. I only mean that they do not develop power of any sort.

[nonethewiser]

But think about it from the perspective of a US that wants to reduce carbon emissions. Why not simply throttle carbon emissions directly?

[burningChrome]

The US has been?

- U.S. greenhouse gas emissions peaked around 2007, then declined by roughly 18% from that peak.

- 1990–2022: Emissions fell about 3% compared to 1990 levels, despite population and GDP growth.

- 2005 Benchmark: Emissions in 2022 were 17% below 2005 levels, largely due to cleaner electricity generation and efficiency improvements.

- Transportation: Consistently the largest source, accounting for ~30–35% of CO₂ emissions.

- Electric Power: Significant reductions—down 41% since 2005—due to coal-to-natural-gas shift and renewables growth.

- 2024: Energy-related CO₂ emissions totaled 4,772 million metric tons, down from 4,940 MMt in 2022.

- 2022: Total U.S. GHG emissions were 6,343 million metric tons CO₂e, or 5,489 MMt after land-sector sequestration

[M95D]

Because it doesn't work. We (all) need to cut fossil fuel extraction. Once it gets extracted, there is absolutely no way it will not be burned.

[jppope]

Super weird that they don't factor in productivity at all. Don't take me the wrong way I hate the fact that the United States thinks the only way to do anything is to burn fossil fuels, but that doesn't change the fact that our output per capita has got to be 10x the countries we are being compared against in this article.

[exitb]

In what sense? Does an American bolt factory produce 10x as much bots per worker, or is the American bolt just 10x more expensive?

[dollylambda]

I think in the sense that if you look at the ratio of say GDP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...) to CO2 emission, you could get _a_ metric of efficiency. The product produced vs the emissions produced.

[gruez]

There's a chart that does this directly: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-intensity

[twothreeone]

That perspective also helps to understand the position that any call for radical climate action must be a weaponization of competing economies to weaken the leader of the pack. So it is very bad framing. Do the work cheaper, better, and at scale. By doing it more efficiently you win. Oh, and of course you'll be more innovative too.

[user_7832]

In some cases, I’d argue it might ironically be a worse metric. Case in point, a large AI adjacent firm like NVIDIA - or even OpenAI - that is both “creating gdp”, but also worsening stuff. I’d say a farmer farming in a sustainable way might have a near 0 gdp compared to Sama, but environmentally is much better.

[dollylambda]

Agree that not all gdp is equal or beneficial. However, I think most people would be remiss to the idea of giving up on science and technology and a return to the agricultural era.

[jobigoud]

GDP doesn't differentiate between good and bad things and for climate change it would be border line circular because natural disasters like floods and hurricanes are "good" for the GDP (reconstruction effort is a net positive, destruction itself is not subtracted).

[DevKoala]

> I was hoping to see a comment like this. These sorts of “global collaborations” seem to always end with the US carry all the water, and the goal from the other countries perspective is to throttle the US. Like the Paris Accords.

I agree 100%.

I don't see the benefits here.

[izacus]

Do you have even a slightest proof for your claim?

[wagwang]

> Is food a human right

https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3951462?ln=en

> Amount of food sent

https://www.gao.gov/international-food-assistance

[sbohacek]

This is an example of US not carrying "all the water." The second link shows that the EU+UK (countries + institutions) sent more food aid than the US. The UK has roughly 1/5 the population of the US and sent more than 1/5 as much as the US. Or, the UK has roughly 1/8 the GDP of the US and sent far more than 1/8 as much as the US.

Also, the data is 2014-2018 when US food aid was managed by USAID. What is the US percentage now that USAID has been eliminated?

[wagwang]

The us share of world gdp was between 22-27% and it was contributing 36%.

Secondly, this is only external aid, internally the US far outspend most countries with 100B towards SNAP. Most euro nations don't even have food stamp like programs.

[acdha]

So we’ve gone from “the U.S. carrying all of the water” to “the U.S. carrying 10 points more, in a way which heavily subsidized a key political group”? That seems like a pretty big shift in goalposts.

[wagwang]

OP asked for the slightest proof and I presented proof that the US is over contributing in food aid by 50% and now I'm goalpost shifting? lol...

And just so we are clear, that meager 10 points that I'm goal post shifting for is probably life or death for millions.

[twothreeone]

If you're trying to convince someone (other countries the US) the burden of proof is on you.

[izacus]

Stop normalizing lies.

[nonethewiser]

Proof for his claim that this is how it seems to him? Isn't the proof self evident - he said it seems that way. Obviously this doesn't immediately make it true but asking for "proof" mischaracterizes the nature of his statement.

[lovich]

You know what the fun fact that everyone I hear complain about the US spending more than is fair on international projects ignores or appears ignorant of?

When you’re the one carrying the water, you get to decide where the water goes.

I actually prefer regimes like NATO where everyone is happy to leave the US in charge and doesn’t arm themselves. For all the projection of “strength” the current admin gives off, they are on their way towards reigning over a kingdom formed from the ashes of the republic's empire

[whimsicalism]

I prefer multilateralism, but I do think there are challenges when every country that isn't the biggest smashes the 'defect' button as many times as they can.

[rpmisms]

OK so can everyone else please pay?

[_3u10]

Most US foreign aid is delivered as bombs, and/or directly funding the terrorists.

And if not directly funding the terrorists, creating a situation so stupid that it will lead to a fresh batch for next years war.

Neither the people paying for it, nor the people receiving it want it to be done that way.

[CaptWillard]

And don't forget the tertiary effects as we displace millions with those bombs, only to take in a large number of "asylum seekers" from the countries we "aided".

IMO this is all by design, and there are a non-zero number of NGO operatives on this very site who are frustrated that anything is impeding that plan.

[estearum]

What about non-proliferation treaties which have prevented the vast majority of countries from bankrupting themselves in an existential sprint to nuclear weapons?

[brazukadev]

Don't worry, China is willingly replacing the US in these global collaborations.

[BoredPositron]

Say what you want about this treaty but China is running circles around you regarding Paris.

[HFguy]

What point are you trying to make? I'm honestly not sure. Is it that China is polluting a lot? Or a little? That they are making environmental progress? Or none?

[BoredPositron]

They they are exceeding their initial commitment. Talking about pollution in your tone is also a bit rich coming from the biggest net polluter in all of history.

[nomel]

What percent difference in reduction do you see if they didn't sign the treaty?

[BoredPositron]

Doesn't matter they committed to a target and exceed it. We see two countries with stagnation (changes below 1%) and regressions... one is the us.

[nomel]

I think it does matter. My questions is, was their progress in any way related to the treaty, or would it have happened anyways?

[glonq]

Yes like the Ottawa Treaty banning Land Mines, in which 166 inconsiderate countries failed to consider the needs of big-time land-mine manufacturers like the US.

/s

[sschueller]

Like throttling the US from committing war crimes?

[brabel]

Poor US always being bullied by everyone else. What kind of world have you been living in where the reality is not the exact opposite??

[colechristensen]

Eh, there are a bunch of these kinds of treaties the US won't sign because for most of the signatories they're inconsequential but they're a huge lever for other countries to take sovereignty from the US.