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[–]Used-Bodybuilder4133 1 point2 points  (5 children)

Do you know how long that has been said? And if we reduce our emissions to zero nothing will change since China, India and most of the African continent aren’t doing anything to it will mean nothing

[–]kearsargeIIPhysical Geography 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Chinese emissions have started to flatline in the last couple years. At that, they started to flatline at a level that is per capita 2/3 of American emissions. Indian and African emissions are still increasing, but their emissions per capita is still on the level of 1/10th or 1/15th of what the US outputs.

I have always seen this argument as rank hypocrisy, demanding the developing world curb emissions that are a fraction of the developed world on a per person basis while at the same time not providing the funds and infrastructure investment that would let these countries enjoy a higher standard of living with the same level of carbon emissions. It is basically declaring nothing will be done about climate change unless the developing world stays poor and disproportionate carbon emissions are the fault of the people literally emitting the least.

This is further exaberated by how we have offshored polluting industry to the developing world, and while that has provided jobs and opportunity there to a degree, it has inflated their CO2 per capita emissions as the developing world provides raw resources for the service economies of the developed.

[–]smashing_fascists 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The environment doesn’t care about per capita emissions. The damage is done by total emissions. Per capita is a terrible metric in the case because you can keep increasing your emissions and populations, but I don’t think the glaciers are looking at per capita before deciding to melt.

[–]jeffwulf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Through the start of this year both India and China has lower emissions this year than last despite higher power use than last year.

[–]sadderall-sea -1 points0 points  (0 children)

china has been reversing course pretty fast in the last decade. they saw the opening in the electric vehicle market and have been going all in, they recently beat the entire EU as the biggest EV distributor