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by hn_throwaway_99 14 days ago
How much of that is just outsourcing much of our industry to Asia/etc.?
3 comments

Yes, this is the right question to ask. A lot of the decrease in emissions in Western nations is the equivalent of dumping your trash in a lot across town. Sure it's "gone", but only in a technical sense.
Asia is also moving towards renewables.
Not as much as people would have you believe.
What a terrible answer.
US imports represent approximately 14% of GDP, exports is about 11%. So net imports represents about 3% of GDP. Assuming emissions are roughly proportional to spending the US is exporting 3% of its emissions.
> Assuming emissions are roughly proportional to spending

But without more info, that seems like a pretty awful assumption. A lot of the stuff we export are services and high value goods that I would think have a relatively low "emissions to value" ratio compared to the lower value manufactured goods we import.

>But without more info, that seems like a pretty awful assumption.

I don't know why you think that, pretty much everything we buy devolves to energy in some form or another.

Because it's not an even split. Sure, I could buy that, on average, energy use grows in proportion to economic growth, but some activities (e.g. services) I'd expect to have much less energy use that others (e.g. manufacturing).

And, when you look at actual data, e.g. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33812, that is exactly what you see.