[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.

[user_7832]

Agree, to clarify, I’m specifically skeptical of the US GDP as much of it seems of a very bubble-like and speculative nature. Tesla (stock) pre NVIDIA was probably the poster boy for the longest of times.

[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).