Curious to see China as the whipping boy of climate change, even as the US consumer markets pivot to the far dirtier India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines for its cheap labor and consumer surplus.
this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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China is the biggest emitter. India and Indonesia have about a quarter of Chinas per capita emissions. Malaysia is about as bad as China in terms of per capita emissions. It however is also about as rich as China in per capita terms, so not a place for truely cheap workers.
China is the biggest emitter. India and Indonesia have about a quarter of Chinas per capita emissions.
China isn't the biggest emitter per capita. Why would you suddenly shift the goalposts between sentences?
Malaysia is about as bad as China in terms of per capita emissions.
The big difference being that Chinese emissions per capita have finally started falling, while Malaysia and India are seeing an unchecked rise. A big part of this shift is due to the production of western-oriented consumer goods production. As the Chinese state grows more strict in their emissions standards, international business is shifting manufacturing to countries with looser regulations and weaker government institutions.
China isn’t the biggest emitter per capita. Why would you suddenly shift the goalposts between sentences?
Why do you have a problem with multiple facts? It is rather simple: People look at China, because it is the largest emitter in the world. Then you claimed that countries like India and Indonesia are dirtier then China, which is looking at emissions per capita, just plain and simply wrong.
The big difference being that Chinese emissions per capita have finally started falling,
Again problems with facts. China has had a slight growth in emissions this year and the population is falling. There have been some months and quarters with emissions dropping, but it is still probably stable.
Even when you look at consumption China is by far the largest emitter in the world. In 2022 the OECDs combined emissions were only 30% higher then those of China, when looking at consumption. When you look at per capita emissions, those are close to EU level and the data is from 2022, so it might have crossed by now.
https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
Also China had insane emissions growth for decades from a low level due to producing for the West. Interesting that you seem to want to deny countries like India and Indonesia that opportunity. The main reason production is leaving China is high cost, due to high wages.
Why do you have a problem with multiple facts?
Comparing gross to per-capita is deliberately misleading, not factual.
China has had a slight growth in emissions this year and the population is falling
China’s CO2 falls 1% in Q2 2024 in first quarterly drop since Covid-19
As a result of the strong capacity growth – and despite poor wind conditions – solar and wind covered 52% of electricity demand growth in the first half of 2024 and 71% since March. (The fall in wind speeds can be seen from NASA MERRA-2 data averaged for all of China.)
Indeed, the increase in power generation from solar and wind reported by the National Energy Administration in the first half of the year, at 171 terawatt hours (TWh), exceeded the UK’s total electricity supply of 160TWh in the first half of 2023.
Rapid demand growth in January–February, at 11%, had outpaced even the clean energy additions. But combined with a rebound in hydropower generation, the increase in non-fossil electricity supply exceeded power demand growth in the March to June period.
The population is functionally flat. The rapid onboarding of green energy has displaced the need for new fossil fuel sources and depressed carbon emissions for the first time since the pandemic.
Also China had insane emissions growth for decades
China had normal, if not below average, emissions growth for decades. Their reliance on hydro power and mass transit has kept them well below the western industrial average.
The main reason production is leaving China is high cost
The costs are coming in the form of tariffs and other trade restrictions placed by an increasingly trade-hostile US federal government. Real cost of manufacturing in the Chinese economy continues to fall, as new advanced infrastructure reduce the material and energy costs of per-unit production.
What the other Pacific Rim countries have that China lacks is a scorched earth commitment to industrial expansion. They're destroying their local ecology and sacrificing the quality of life of their native residents to fuel a short term burst of foreign investment. But it can't last.
China is also a bigger emitter per capita than most european countries - for a decade now.
Why do so many people only compare to US - a small fraction of the world - maybe as fits simplistic narratives ?
Why do so many people only compare to US - a small fraction of the world
Not by per capital emissions rate. That's the rub. They consume horrendous volumes of energy and emit plumes of waste so they can... what? All do donuts with their F-1250s in the parking lots of bankrupt Walmarts?
Now they're at the heart of AI development, another phenomenal energy suck that exists to vomit ads to their perpetually ravenous residents so they'll buy even more shit.
Europe had problems it isn't the problem like the globetrotting industrial behemoth that is the US.
It’s just posturing. There’s an economic factor behind it. If there was not a profit to be made, they would be burning coal with great abandon.