When man first walked on the moon, the carbon dioxide concentration in Earth’s atmosphere was 325 parts per million (ppm).
By 9/11, it was 369 ppm, and when COVID-19 shut down normal life in 2020, it had shot up to 414 parts ppm.
This week, our planet hit the highest levels ever directly recorded: 430 parts per million.
“This problem is not going away, and we’re moving further and further into uncharted territory, and almost certainly, very dangerous territory.”
Right now, China is the problem. Historically it’s been the USA, but right now it’s China.
The upcoming problem is India.
More specifically the problem is coal. China and India are ramping up their usage of coal whilst the rest of the world is phasing it out.
Yes, those countries are also building clean sources of power, but coal is about 55% of their primary energy each. 80% of Chinas primary energy comes from fossil fuels and 90% of India’s. Their rate of new coal outstrips their use of wind and solar.
The earth cannot support the huge populations of these countries unless they are powered by something other than coal. Even oil and gas would be a huge improvement. These two governments hold all the power on this issue.
The problem is these numbers are based on the country of origin of emissions and don’t take into account the demand/consumption that is driving those emissions. China is a huge exporter and the US is a major importer of Chinese goods. US consumption is driving a lot of China’s emissions
By not being a manufacturing economy, we’re able to offset the appearance of our emissions when the data is tracked this way
China is the one choosing coal to fuel it’s exports. It’s the government that has to change policy.
This is one place where tariffs are reasonable policy. Coal costs less than renewables but has a higher environmental cost. Products made using coal energy cost less because of this externalization/excess environmental cost. Tariff can be set to account for the environmental cost making goods produced with renewables price competitive with those produced with coal.
Yup. Also the whole reason China produces the majority of the rare earths isn’t because there’s some cave that only exists in China they come from. It’s because processing rare earths involves toxic waste and it’s cheaper to do it when you’re willing to just dump the toxic waste on the ground, which is what they do in China.
Environmentally motivated tariffs makes a lot of sense, if companies aren’t gaining a competitive edge by being environmentally irresponsible, they will start being more responsible. Trying to appeal to the morals of corporations isn’t going to get anywhere, there needs to be a financial incentive for them to do things right.
Does the USA still lead in per capita emissions?
Yes, but it’s coming down. Also, it doesn’t really matter.
Fact is, the planet doesn’t care about per-capita. It cares about absolute tonnes of CO2. When 3 billion are increasing the burning of coal, 350 million reducing their coal use isn’t really significant.
There have been five previous mass extinction events (that we have evidence of) and the planet and life are still here. Planet doesn’t care at all.
Per capita does matter because non-USA citizens are not going to voluntarily accept having a lower standard of living so USA citizens can keep their higher standard. If the Chinese population consumed as much resources per capita as the USA it would take four planet earths to sustain us.
Yeah the attitude of “let China fix this” is really annoying. Don’t people want to be the world leaders in fixing a global problem?
Also “just let China fix this” means only China will have all of the skill experience with the technology that we’ll all be using in the future. Why would you want that? It’s just laziness plain and simple.
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