[HN Gopher] U.S. per capita carbon emissions are lower now than ... ___________________________________________________________________ U.S. per capita carbon emissions are lower now than in 1918 Author : nabla9 Score : 37 points Date : 2021-08-06 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (ourworldindata.org) (TXT) w3m dump (ourworldindata.org) | godelski wrote: | Alternative title: US per capita emissions at lowest levels since | 1964. | | I'm not sure which is more accurate but I believe the one I | proposed is. | | It is still a good sign that we're decreasing but I do not think | the title accurately indicates the state of things and I think | people assumed it as a smooth curve up then down between 1918 and | now and not a low and chaotic period between 1918 and 1960. My | fear is that people often respond to the title and not the | content. While I'd rather have the latter I think we should make | title as accurate as possible and understand what assumptions | people will make. | [deleted] | akomtu wrote: | So it was 15T/person in 1920, then it crossed the 20T mark in 70s | and now has fallen back to 15T. The catch is that the US | population has increased quite a lot. Are there similar charts | for CO2 absorbtion by oceans and trees? | [deleted] | _Microft wrote: | Move the slider to 1921, see how suddenly the current value is | 24% above that one. It's basically a meaningless, cherrypicked | point in time that was submitted. This feels misleading at best | and disingenious at worst. | zat wrote: | 1921 encompasses the tail end of a depression, which means | economic activity was greatly reduced, and you would expect | emissions to be greatly reduced as a result. 1918 doesn't have | this issue nearly as bad. | | Why not pick a date during the tail end of Great Depression | instead? Would that have been too obvious? | seoaeu wrote: | 1918 marks the last year of a world war and the start of a | global pandemic. It might not be the tail end of a | depression, but there's other issues with using it as a | baseline... | wmf wrote: | The all-time high is not cherry-picked and emissions have gone | down since then while the economy has grown. Decoupling is | possible and we just need to keep going. | [deleted] | chrisseaton wrote: | Right. Emissions now lower than when everyone was individually | burning wood and coal 24 hours a day. Ok? Is that surprising or | useful or actionable? | [deleted] | l332mn wrote: | They're not, though. Household emissions are many, many times | larger now. Also wood is not a fossil fuel. | chrisseaton wrote: | > They're not, though. | | Are you saying the data is simply wrong? | | > Household emissions are many, many times larger now. | | The article is about per capita emissions, not household | emissions. | | > Also wood is not a fossil fuel. | | Nobody said it was. What's this got to do with anything? | l332mn wrote: | > Are you saying the data is simply wrong? | | The data only measures cement production and fossil fuel | burning, as the caption says. It says nothing about total | emissions per capita. Hence the title is wrong, yes. | | > The article is about per capita emissions, not | household emissions. | | Household emissions contribute the largest share of per | capita emissions. But hardly any household emissions are | measured by "cement production and fossil fuel burning". | | > Nobody said it was. What's this got to do with | anything? | | Burning wood is carbon neutral. | l332mn wrote: | To put it bluntly, what the title says is just not true. This | graph measures the "burning of fossil fuels for energy and cement | production". Cement production and burning of fossil fules only. | Hence it is misleading at best. It doesn't at all include | household emissions or food production, which represent the | largest share emissions, probably indirectly around 80%-90% of | all emissions, if we measure the whole life cycle of products | consumed. | | I.e. what we're seeing here is a tiny fraction of the total | carbon footprint. Considering that consumption today in terms of | resources per capita has vastly increased, the title is simply a | blatantly false statement. | im_down_w_otp wrote: | I'm not sure why this measurement would matter very much. Insofar | as I understand it, the amount of atmosphere doesn't adjust based | on human population size, so a per capita indicator isn't all | that useful for most of the reasons one even bothers to keep | track of carbon emissions in the first place. | timoth3y wrote: | It's certainly good that it's down, but if you overlay the charts | of the US and China, you can see that post-2000, the US reduction | in CO2 is mirrored by a Chinese increase. | | It's unclear how much of the US reduction is due to genuine | improvements in energy efficiencies and how much is due to simply | moving a lot of manufacturing and heavy industry offshore. | version_five wrote: | I remember politicians where I live congratulating themselves on | meeting some set of CO2 targets a few years ago. The reality is, | we lost most of our manufacturing sector, so energy and fuel use | went down naturally. This chart has no meaning without some kind | of supply chain adjustment to account for where people get the | stuff they consume. | xadhominemx wrote: | Not true. People have done the math and our emissions do not | change that much if you do it by end product consumption vs | production. | | https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 | version_five wrote: | Interesting thanks. I'm curious what the intuition is for | why. My apparently wrong intuition is that if we're importing | all our goods, we're incurring the emissions associated with | their production + transportation in other places. | xadhominemx wrote: | A lot of emissions are from transport, electricity | production, cement production, and heating; none of those | are offshore | | And in terms of manufacturing, while a lot of the labor | intensive (but more emissions light) manufacturing jobs | have gone overseas due to lower wages, most heavy industry | (chemicals, etc) has remained onshore because those | products are bulky | RobLach wrote: | Also 63% higher than 1932. Cherry picked statistical comparison. | tunesmith wrote: | (We have 225 million more people now than in 1918) | [deleted] | jb1991 wrote: | Exactly. Per Capita seems somewhat irrelevant here. | [deleted] | antisthenes wrote: | Doesn't take into account transportation and heating with fossil | fuels. | | This gets posted fairly regularly, but I'm not sure what the | take-away is supposed to be. I think if you post something like | this, you should at least prompt the discussion to start in some | way, so that it isn't just a blank graph. | | Yes, coal is dying as far as electricity generation goes. Has | been for a decade. | philipkglass wrote: | The graph caption says "Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the | burning of fossil fuels for energy and cement production. Land | use change is not included." | | Is the caption incorrect? | sanjiwatsuki wrote: | The metrics don't really change much if you account for CO2 | emissions needed for production/transportation: | | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?... | klysm wrote: | Probably says more about how many people there are than the | carbon production. | 908B64B197 wrote: | It's interesting to look at the long term trends, especially when | looking at some of the largest economies on the planet. | | Comparing the US[0] and China[1], the US has: | | - Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 | (-27%) | | - A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%) | | Meanwhile for the same period China has had | | - a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%) | | - 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007 | | So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint | thanks to innovation and smarter power generation. | | [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states | | [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china | merrvk wrote: | Time to invade china and stop them destroying the earth | CountSessine wrote: | Or... perhaps just by having everything manufactured in China? | Which doesn't work so well when you're China? | nielsbot wrote: | Or anywhere else in the world, eventually. (Soon?) | ivalm wrote: | US exports dirty production to other countries so some of the | drop is not real (just gets allocated to other countries). Also | despite this we still produce more than 2x more per capita than | China. | l332mn wrote: | These graphs measures "burning of fossil fuels for energy and | cement production" only, which only represents a fraction of | the total emissions in a country. It doesn't measure household | emissions or food production. It also heavily favours post- | industrial countries compared to countries still in the process | of building heavy infrastructure (which requires cement | production), like China. These data are biased and self-serving | in that sense. US citizens still consume five times more than | Chinese citizens in terms of resources, which is unsustainable. | bookofsand wrote: | US and China have relatively similar land masses, thus | arguably similar levels of available resources. China happens | to have a population 4.2 larger than US, thus 4.2 lower per | capita resources. If US resource consumption is | unsustainable, then so is China's. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-06 23:01 UTC)