A remote township in China's arid northwest endured temperatures of more than 52 Celsius (126 Fahrenheit) on Sunday, state media reported, setting a record for a country that was battling minus 50C weather just six months ago.
Because China is a country with the third largest land mass with the second largest population in the world. But per capita, they produce half of what an American does.
2 things about this; the planet don’t care about per capita numbers - 52.2 is gonna drop that population real quick. I doubt that would even slow their ruling class down
Second fuck is America a bad comparision. Those 2 will race to a scorched earth quicker than a nuclear war ever could
Per capita numbers are very, very important: they tell us where the low hanging fruit are. The people emitting the most per capita should be pressured most heavily to reduce emissions, because they’re the ones who are polluting most unnecessarily.
Except we’re also setting high temperature records in Canada.
Even with that, it still pisses me off when I hear my fellow Canadians (mostly from a certain province that exports fossil fuel) saying “why should Canada do anything when these other countries are worse”.
Ok, doesn’t change that we need a ton of heat in the winter. An average 1.5 C change doesn’t matter much when we have to heat from -20 to +20, a delta T of 40 degs.
In a perfect democracy perhaps, but in the world we live in the power is in the hands of very few. Id also argue there’s too much noise using it to represent unnecessary pollution, as a single person running a generator in antartica would be horrible per capita - but quite so necessary. Larger populations have the benefit of larger systems, thereby operating more efficiently. A country could also reasonably just triple their population to increase their pollution “quota”, cause money - and a system that can be that manipulated isnt that reasonable of a system.
Looking directly at pollution on the other hand is more like looking directly at what causes the problem (climate change), and minimizing centralized sources of it would have a much more noticable effect. Especially those that have a greater population to landmass ratio (thereby having less untouched human areas) and so less so a positive effect on greenhouse gas removal.
Let’s frame this in inequality terms. Suppose (not the real numbers) we have the top 1% emitting half the greenhouse gases to fuel their lifestyles, and the bottom 99% emit the other half. You’re saying we should focus equally on the two groups when looking for emissions reductions???
Exactly, the world doesn’t care. The average co2 footprint per person globally is around 5 tonnes and as we’ve noticed, that is way too much for our planet to handle, one estimate is that we would need to drop that to below 2.5 tonnes.
China at 7.5 per person is a lot closer to than Canada at 18, Australia at 17, US at around 15 or Russia at 12. EU on average is close at around 8 I believe.
No way canada’s that bad? Thats a perfect example then cause were mostly hydroelectric, just empty as ass (an example I used to the other person is imagine the per capita numbers of an artic exploration group, probably horrible but we could never visit the artic again and still be boiling in superpowers pollution)
“Per capita” means per person, it has nothing to do with being mostly unpopulated. And it sure is that bad.
The exact figures differ slightly depending on who you ask, my source was Worldometer.
Whoops shoulda been a little more specific, I meant because most gas based generators arent nearly efficient as coal based plants (which aint as efficient as nuclear…) in terms of emissions to energy. That added on the fact that they’re probably not designed for sub zero temps and you end up with a horrible per capita (probably, I don’t have any actual numbers to back this up).
Ngl im not too great at expressing my whole thought processmao
Oh we’re pretty bad. Cold winters we need lots of heat. Big houses. Mostly car dependent inner infrastructure. Lots of distance for goods to travel and we still use trucks for it. BC and Quebec may have lots of hydro but that’s not the rest of the country.
It’s not ignoring the problem, you are complaining that we are running out of food because that group of a billion people are eating too much when you have over twice as much food on your own plates, and saying the solution is that they should be forced to eat even less.
It is ignoring the problem. I’m complaining about the massive amounts of carbon China is pumping out and getting worse every year and you’re making excuses.
Classic tragedy of the commons. It’s no one fault. Everyone is doing it. Blah blah blah. None of this is lowering GHGs.
And if we split China into three smaller countries with a population of 450 million each, then those would only produce 3/4th the Co2 of USA each putting USA in the number one spot and solve climate change? China currently pollutes the most overall simply because it has the (second) biggest population, and that makes it look bad in the “per country” statistic. But per person they pollute less than half of what someone from the US, Australia or Canada do.
Another extreme example is India, it is on spot 3 on overall emissions, which means it produces a fuckton of CO2, even though per capita the figure is 1.89 - one person from the US produces as much CO2 emissions than 8 people from India. They are already well below the global average (~5 tons per person) and even below the suggested target to counter climate change - 2.5 per person.
Incidentally, China is the single largest contributor of GHGs in the world. Their coal fired power generation is immense and incredibly damaging.
Because China is a country with the third largest land mass with the second largest population in the world. But per capita, they produce half of what an American does.
Both need to significantly reduce their emissions. We do not need deflection for either.
Thank you, I’m so sick of hearing it. It’s just another cop out from climate change deniers.
2 things about this; the planet don’t care about per capita numbers - 52.2 is gonna drop that population real quick. I doubt that would even slow their ruling class down
Second fuck is America a bad comparision. Those 2 will race to a scorched earth quicker than a nuclear war ever could
Per capita numbers are very, very important: they tell us where the low hanging fruit are. The people emitting the most per capita should be pressured most heavily to reduce emissions, because they’re the ones who are polluting most unnecessarily.
I agree with the idea, but there’s no getting out of needing heat in Canada.
Except we’re also setting high temperature records in Canada.
Even with that, it still pisses me off when I hear my fellow Canadians (mostly from a certain province that exports fossil fuel) saying “why should Canada do anything when these other countries are worse”.
Ok, doesn’t change that we need a ton of heat in the winter. An average 1.5 C change doesn’t matter much when we have to heat from -20 to +20, a delta T of 40 degs.
In a perfect democracy perhaps, but in the world we live in the power is in the hands of very few. Id also argue there’s too much noise using it to represent unnecessary pollution, as a single person running a generator in antartica would be horrible per capita - but quite so necessary. Larger populations have the benefit of larger systems, thereby operating more efficiently. A country could also reasonably just triple their population to increase their pollution “quota”, cause money - and a system that can be that manipulated isnt that reasonable of a system.
Looking directly at pollution on the other hand is more like looking directly at what causes the problem (climate change), and minimizing centralized sources of it would have a much more noticable effect. Especially those that have a greater population to landmass ratio (thereby having less untouched human areas) and so less so a positive effect on greenhouse gas removal.
Let’s frame this in inequality terms. Suppose (not the real numbers) we have the top 1% emitting half the greenhouse gases to fuel their lifestyles, and the bottom 99% emit the other half. You’re saying we should focus equally on the two groups when looking for emissions reductions???
I mean…… does Mother Earth give a shit if you’re a 1%-er?
Exactly, the world doesn’t care. The average co2 footprint per person globally is around 5 tonnes and as we’ve noticed, that is way too much for our planet to handle, one estimate is that we would need to drop that to below 2.5 tonnes.
China at 7.5 per person is a lot closer to than Canada at 18, Australia at 17, US at around 15 or Russia at 12. EU on average is close at around 8 I believe.
No way canada’s that bad? Thats a perfect example then cause were mostly hydroelectric, just empty as ass (an example I used to the other person is imagine the per capita numbers of an artic exploration group, probably horrible but we could never visit the artic again and still be boiling in superpowers pollution)
“Per capita” means per person, it has nothing to do with being mostly unpopulated. And it sure is that bad.
The exact figures differ slightly depending on who you ask, my source was Worldometer.
Whoops shoulda been a little more specific, I meant because most gas based generators arent nearly efficient as coal based plants (which aint as efficient as nuclear…) in terms of emissions to energy. That added on the fact that they’re probably not designed for sub zero temps and you end up with a horrible per capita (probably, I don’t have any actual numbers to back this up).
Ngl im not too great at expressing my whole thought processmao
Oh we’re pretty bad. Cold winters we need lots of heat. Big houses. Mostly car dependent inner infrastructure. Lots of distance for goods to travel and we still use trucks for it. BC and Quebec may have lots of hydro but that’s not the rest of the country.
Ok? Thats a great way to ignore the problem. How does it reduce emissions?
It’s not ignoring the problem, you are complaining that we are running out of food because that group of a billion people are eating too much when you have over twice as much food on your own plates, and saying the solution is that they should be forced to eat even less.
It is ignoring the problem. I’m complaining about the massive amounts of carbon China is pumping out and getting worse every year and you’re making excuses.
Classic tragedy of the commons. It’s no one fault. Everyone is doing it. Blah blah blah. None of this is lowering GHGs.
And if we split China into three smaller countries with a population of 450 million each, then those would only produce 3/4th the Co2 of USA each putting USA in the number one spot and solve climate change? China currently pollutes the most overall simply because it has the (second) biggest population, and that makes it look bad in the “per country” statistic. But per person they pollute less than half of what someone from the US, Australia or Canada do.
Another extreme example is India, it is on spot 3 on overall emissions, which means it produces a fuckton of CO2, even though per capita the figure is 1.89 - one person from the US produces as much CO2 emissions than 8 people from India. They are already well below the global average (~5 tons per person) and even below the suggested target to counter climate change - 2.5 per person.
You have to measure per capita. A population 4 times the size of the US, you can’t compare straight numbers.
Their one child policy is probably the best thing that ever happened to reduce greenhouse gas emissions too.
This is actually not true. The US has contributed almost double the total emissions of China.
https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
OP said China is there largest contributor. That is true.
OP did not say China made the largest contribution historically.
This isn’t about historical. What’s done is done and we need to act on what can be changed now. We can’t change history. Your link is useless.