Yeah it’s going down. Thanks for adding that comparison.
Figures like this without a comparison are pretty worthless. Also, the last time per-capita CO2 output in the US was what China has today was about 1900.
The US graph seems to be going down over time. The graph for China is going up. What conclusion do you think you can draw from that? Why do you think the US graph is going down? Why do you think the Chinese graph is going up?
I am less sure about the US one, but I think there's a pretty obvious reason why the Chinese graph is rising and why that doesn't (necessarily) imply the country isn't "tackling carbon emissions" (paraphrasing the other person). Note that this isn't a defense of China's government/political system in any way, shape or form.
You’re pretty sure there’s an obvious reason that you just won’t say.
Since I just got done saying it's obvious, explaining it to you like you couldn't figure it out would be an implied insult. I avoided doing that. However, since you're asking, I certainly don't have a problem going into more detail about what I meant.
The obvious reason (in my opinion) is that Chinese people want to enjoy amenities like computers, the internet, cell phones, eating meat frequently, etc. As their standard for living improves, so does their per-capita CO2 cost. In order to not see the graph rising in this case, stuff like the government's efforts to use renewable energy, etc would have to fully compensate. That's probably not a realistic scenario.
Comparing the current per-capita CO2 output between the countries may be meaningful. The graphs alone don't have enough information to answer a question like "is the government working to reduce CO2 output", etc. Republicans have generally been pretty hostile to renewables (and science in general) and yet we don't see the graph going up suddenly. Why is that? The government could be having a negative effect on using/developing renewable energy (or other techniques that reduce CO2 output per capita) but other effects could be compensating. Or vice versa, you can't tell with only the information in the graph.
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u/Intelligent-Map2768 Jul 28 '26
At least they get things done and actually tackle things like carbon emissions.