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 isn't the biggest emitter per capita. Why would you suddenly shift the goalposts between sentences?
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.
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.
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.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-off-track-emissions-goals-energy-demand-offsets-renewables-push-2024-11-27/
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.
Comparing gross to per-capita is deliberately misleading, not factual.
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.
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 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 ?
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.
You're thinking of SO2 emissions from before the new low-sulfur fuel standard went into effect a few years back. Shipping is only a few percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
Actual emissions by sector:
Remember here: shipping is only part of transportation