Definitely concerning. Only tangentially related, but I feel like I see a lot of mud coming from the USA towards China’s emissions. I do think it’s important to call China out for emissions, but there’s something that feels a little off about the world’s most polluting country calling out others.
Per capita they’re still waaay lower than the USA. And they’re implementing public transit and renewable power faster than most other countries.
That’s not even considering how much Chinese manufacturing is solely for Western consumption.
China’s per capita emissions are also waaay higher then those of the EU for example, while the EU’s emissions are falling and China’s are rising. Also China’s emissions fall by about 10%, when you adjust for trade.
The big problem is more that the countries most responsible for climate change is changing. The West emissions are falling, whereas non Western countries emissions are rising. So the West argues that climate reparations should be paid by the countries emitting the most and not by the countries who have the most money. They are related, but not the same. Also that that bases needs to be adjusted over time.
Still, it is worth emphasising that China’s emissions remain far behind those of the EU on a per-capita basis.
When weighting historical emissions per head of population in 2024, China’s contribution is just 227tCO2 per capita, less than a third of the 682tCO2 for people in the EU27.
When historically weighted. Currently China puts out much more per capita per year (8.4t per capita to Europe’s 5.6t). The US and Canada are still way above that, but they’re pretty consistently going down year over year while China is only going up.
Could catastrophic CO2 emissions ever constitute a casus belli?
