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by flakeoil 11 days ago
> that correlation is very strong; just compare Luxembourg, which is much wealthier and more polluting than surrounding nations

Well, your theory does not hold at all if you look at Switzerland which pollutes 1/4 of the US per capita. CO2 pollution is not and does not have to be correlated with standard of living.
1 comments
myrmidon 11 days ago
The reality is obviously more complex, and many countries have already managed to somewhat decouple economic growth from CO2 emissions (very good!), but as a crude approximation: More money => everyone gets more stuff => more CO2 emissions (producing and running that stuff).

If you want meaningful CO2/capita comparisons, you also have to be very careful with countries that get ("free") hydro power opportunities for electricity because that distorts the picture massively (same for e.g. Norway).

Big producers of hydrocarbons, on the other hand (like the US) have to work hard to resist the allure of cheap & convenient fossils.

Switzerland is so far ahead in this comparison because they get a lot of CO2-free hydroelectricity (>50%), have to import most hydrocarbons (=> incentive against) and also save massively on transportation because density is much higher.

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gwerbin 11 days ago
How much of that "decoupling" is actually just "exporting"? Not being glib or dismissive, I think it's an important distinction and I don't know enough about Europe to know how the two compare.
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myrmidon 11 days ago
> How much of that "decoupling" is actually just "exporting"?

Some fraction certainly is. Here is trade-adjusted CO2 per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

Note how this still trends down for most western industrialized countries despite positive economic growth over the last two decades.

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