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Unequal consumption lies at the heart of the climate crisis (noemamag.com)
101 points by walterbell on Sept 10, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 150 comments



“The richest 10% of people are responsible for 52% of cumulative global emissions — and the 1% for a full 15%.”

"Of course, many Americans are wealthy in global terms. Oxfam has defined the world’s 1% as the 60 million people earning over $109,000 a year. They defined the 10% as the 770 million people earning over $38,000."

The vast majority of those reading and posting on HN are in the highest global wealth bracket(s). Myself included. This article isn't about billionaires and sports icons. It is about what Americans (and many Westerns Europeans) consider middle class.


America is freaky rich - how many people in this forum grow food of any kind (outside of a hobby) for example?

I'm not too surprised on the % of share of the footprint, people making (or spending) at least $40k drive a lot of worldwide consumption (and shipping).

I'd wager a lot of the carbon emissions of the $100k and above group come from flights. Travel among that income level has become extremely popular in the past 50 years. For example, I used to live in California, and it was surprising when I did the napkin math to find the emissions generated to visit family near the Appalachians (just for my seat on the plane).

I calculated that a given person's portion of a round trip cross-American flight generated as much kg C02 as a typical American generates by consuming a year's worth of meat. My two round-trip flights a year were undo-ing the climate savings of two typical American vegetarians.

Given ~400 passengers on a 747, each plane that darts across the whole of America undos 200 Americans who gave up meat for a year.

The FAA claims to process 16mil flights a year of various lengths.

EDIT: some phrases

EDIT2: more

EDIT3: even more content


Not sure why we tend to start the discussion with air travel.

100,000 commercial flights, all over the world, every day of the year add up to about 2% of total emissions.

The 40% of the global electricity generated for the past several decades from those dirty coal power plants that no one wants to live near seem like a better place to start.

In addition to all that pollution, there’s quite a bit of CO2


You make an excellent point, but there is something about flights that's often overlooked. Night flights are actually significantly worse than day flights, because the emissions don't reflect heat from the sun but trap heat from the Earth.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/jun/15/theairlinein...

That said, this isn't a large enough effect to discredit your point.


That’s a very misleading way of looking at the problem.

There are no good place to start before tackling the other places. We have to start everywhere and cut everywhere. You can’t shield your life style behind the excuse that some things are worst.

2% is also a big number. Cleaner planes are on the way but trying to shift how you travel towards cleaner mean of transport is everyone responsibility.

So is helping the poor countries currently electrifying which constitute the majority of new coal plants being built have access to cleaner sources of power.


That’s not correct. There are large emission issues that would should tackle first. How we generate electricity is one of them.

Carl Sagan warned us almost 40 years ago that coal would be a future problem.

https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI

That was clearly a large problem that could have been addressed, and still needs to be ASAP.

Coal-fired power stations emit over 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year,[4] about one fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions, so are the single largest cause of climate change. 8500 coal power plants in the world.

“Coal-fired power stations emit over 10 Gt of carbon dioxide each year,[4] about one fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions, so are the single largest cause of climate change.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-fired_power_station

So, we start the discussion with air travel, trying to reduce 2% to under 2%. While we’ve ignored 20% of global emissions.

We actually cost ourselves decades. So many miracles needed by 2050, when we could be talking 2070.

Now, let’s just tell everyone we need to do everything at once.


> That’s not correct. There are large emission issues that would should tackle first.

No we should and can and are working on tackling everything at once because we don’t have the time to sit on our ass and wait for others to solve issues which don’t affect us before moving if we want our way of life to survive.

There is no valid reason to work sequentially here.


You might be interested in https://shameplane.com/


If it’s any consolation, no US domestic carrier operates the 747 or A380 today, and their 2-engine cousins are much less thirsty.


How was it surprising? The carbon footprint of flying has been known for decades.


I suppose I was sheltered until several years ago.


Jancovici famously made the calculation in public in 2003: If you divide permissible emissions (3Gtec/yr) by Earth population, each human can EITHER:

- Use one Paris-NYC flight per year,

- OR eat meat,

- OR heat their home,

- OR drive to work.

Choose one. All EU calculations about emissions are based on this target, but it’s too early to tell people. It’s based on: Earth absorbs 3 gigatons-equivalent-carbon by night, so we can emit as much. And that’s what humanity emitted in 1990, so it’s achievable. Since then, we’ve double or trippled.

For myself, I consider that the only flaw in this reasoning is that dividing the global permissible emissions by population “is communism”, because it assumes that every human should be given the same pay. I consider it’s normal that some earn much more. That’s the only flaw, and that’s because I’m a capitalist, but it’s great to have the ballpark figure of what would be FAIR to consume for everyone.

(I also have doubts about scientists’ reliability when topics are heavily politicized, but that’s my affair, at least I’m repeating their conclusions as-is, so you can judge).


> And that’s what humanity emitted in 1990, so it’s achievable. Since then, we’ve double or trippled.

Note that global population in 1990 was 5.3 bn vs 7.4 bn in 2022.

That doesn't mean it isn't achievable - but it's implies a significant per-person reduction to achieve 90s levels.


To me, this is where direct air capture and geoengineering come into play: there's a saddle point where we (as a planet) can afford to pay to increase consumption and offset emissions above that.

Which is why globalizing a carbon market is so key. It organically (ha) funds what we want people to be researching and doing anyway!


This is misleading and creates the illusion that sustainability is impossible.

Instead, only the fraction of population using more that their fair share is responsible for reducing emissions.

And we can very much reduce meat consumption and car usage, improve home insulation, and fly around much less.

And do that while improving health, life expectancy and quality of life.


> Instead, only the fraction of population using more that their fair share is responsible for reducing emissions.

What is “fair”?

Again, it isn’t fair that a country can emit more, just by having more population.


Why would you _not_ divide up emissions by people? (And especially by country, if that's what you're trying to say.)

Countries don't need to eat, countries don't live in homes that need to be heated, countries don't need to get to work, countries don't travel, etc etc etc, _people do._


> Why would you _not_ divide up emissions by people?

Because then you give an incentive to reproduce like rabbits, to be familiar. And reproducing too much is 90% of the reason why we’re terraforming all our forests and swamps. 90% humid zones of Earth have been urbanized in the last 30 years.


Citation needed.


As capitalist you should recognise that permissible emission as a capital, not pay.

Of course you could distribute that capital by free market optimisation. But before there can be buyers there must be sellers. Who has the first claim of those permissible emissions?


Emissions are so close to how much you spend. Don’t fly but spend the airfare money on Chinese toys: Same carbon emitted. So having the right to emit n teq = having the right to spend m money.

So emissions are a flux and emission permits are capital, you are right, but it’s just a philosophical argumenation, like photons are both a particle and a wave, and real estate is both capital and a currency.

Maybe your question was, how do we impose others to not emit carbon, how do we set up the first emission permits. Well that’s hard. But it doesn’t matter - They should have a price and change hands when someone can afford them.


I was alluding to the geo-libertarian position that the ”fair” distribution or ”land”(in the economical sense) is fully compatible with capitalism, and not necessarily communism.


Yes, many of us on this forum are extraordinarily wealthy by global standards, myself included. I think that gives us some responsibility to reduce our impact on the planet where we’re able.

I don’t think we can justify asking those who are already struggling to do more individually, but in this highest income bracket I think we certainly can.


Heck, HN constantly gives rise to bickering about how $109k is a very low salary to make.

The fact that puts you in the global 1% blows my mind

edit to clarify: This is not a value judgement on money. Just saying it blows my mind – the human brain (at least mine) wasn’t made for the power law


This is why it’s always important to consider purchasing power parity.


It’s the very effective and ubiquitous psychological trick of seeing yourself as being in a relatively compromised situation in order to justify acquiring ever more comparative advantage. I find it far less appalling to actually recognize how good you have it, continue to seek further wealth, but seek wealth in industries that are net benefits to society.


id wager the 0.1% of the world or the .5% of America are the worst offenders. Policy only affects the poor.


What is your point? That middle class Americans don’t have it easy and also contribute plenty to global emissions? Both are true, not only in a global context but in a historical one. I just don’t see why we can’t acknowledge that and frankly be grateful.


It is though…relative to the expenses necessary to live in certain areas.


$109k in Manhattan, or Silicon Valley is pretty poor.


Looks like median income in Silicon Valley is $126k [1] and median household income in Manhattan is $93k. I wouldn’t call $109k “pretty poor” in either local.

[1] https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/economy/income/pers... [2] https://www.city-data.com/income/income-Manhattan-New-York.h...


This further highlights the reality of lower income brackets relative to that.


If you make that in Manhattan, you are probably young, or live in Queens/South Brooklyn/Jersey City and you’re doing fine. You get pinched if you make just enough to live in Manhattan or trendy nearby neighborhoods, and your career requires it, but not enough to save and prepare for retirement.


Only because India and Africa skew the average by having extremely large population. Given a certain amount of wealth, they chose to divide it between more kids, of course each will have to consume less. Western countries chose low-density, i.e. have few kids per family, which means each can afford more. It was our sacrifice. Fewer kids. Smaller extended families, even for Christmas. Less human happiness. Everything bet on each kid. But at least each of them can afford housing, and our girls can leave home without having to find a husband, if ever.

China, on the other hand, deserves a much larger share of emissions, since, despite being overpopulated, they sacrificed themselves to be able to control overpopulation, and they work like crazy.

Summary: Divide carbon emissions by country, not by headcount, because if you calculate by headcount, you give incentive to reproduce like rabbits, which is causing global warming.


Regarding China, I would suggest reading https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57018837 (2019) and consider that it hasn't exactly shown itself to be responsible with development.

And while 2021 and 2022 are seeing a drop ( https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-se... ) there is every indication that it will pick right back up and accelerate.

> Even as China’s coal demand is falling, the output from domestic coal mines is increasing rapidly. This resulted in a major overall drop in coal imports in the first quarter of the year, as reported by China Customs, and allowed coal plants and other operators to fill up stockpiles that were depleted during last year’s coal shortage.

> Investment in new coal- and gas-fired power capacity is also continuing at a high level. In the first four months of the year, at least 18 thermal power projects started construction, with a total capacity of 12.8 gigawatts (GW). Another 19 projects with a total capacity of 13.0GW were approved for construction.


Summary: Divide carbon emissions by country, not by headcount.

This is what happens when you read statistics wrong coupled with some preexisting bias that show in your choice of words.


Funny how this stating facts as the (blank) contributes (blank)% of (blank). Can be either political correct or not depending what the (blank)s are.


No.

We need to divorce the public policy conversation about climate change and carbon emissions from all of this inflammatory and polarizing rhetoric.

Promote policies that target the worst sources of environmental pollution without coding your speech in a manner that causes everybody who voted for trump or itemized their taxes or whatever to stop listening in the middle of what you're trying to say.


Thank you.

As far as I'm concerned, humanity's most fundamental responsibility is to lower its emissions, as much and as permanently as possible.

I am sick and tired of seeing the focus of this task muddied by instead focusing on who's responsible, mixing social justice with climate science, etc. I could not agree more with the spirit of this stuff, but however well-intentioned it may well be, it only serves to distract and fracture and slow us down.

Yes, 10 corporations are responsible for 75% of emissions (or whatever the meme statistic is); yes, celebrities flying short distances on private planes is egregious; yes, your own personal carbon footprint pales in comparison. And yes, it feels nice to abdicate personal responsibility and say "those corporations/rich people should be responsible." Great, now what?

To all of that I say: all of the above. We need everything from sweeping legislation to individual action, and everything in between, with as little bickering or blame-shifting as possible.


There is no "humanity" in the matter of geopolitics and self-interest, and there is no escape from political conflict. There are competing groups and individuals, and there are competing power centers, governments, nations etc. Geopolitical reality and human history point to inevitable outcome that to be strong and dominant you use the resources available to you, and if others don't, you will be stronger than them.

Look at Europe right now, having pursued ESG policies their economy and industry is becoming much weaker than US and China. What if US and China don't care about carbon footprint? They win, Europe loses. Same with wealthy vs middle class etc. Too much incentive not to subscribe to energy policy of "less" and "weakness".


Doesn't all of this notion of "winning" just dissolve when earth ceases to be habitable?

What you’re describing essentially sounds like mutually assured destruction.


Just consider that anyone who cares deeply about this problem must organize with like minded people and wield power against the holdouts. Even if what you stated above sounds like "insanity", the only question is...will it exist?

Will there be those that pursue power and self interest in opposition to long term policy of "less" and "weakness", even if we all were to agree that long term it's mutually assured destruction (I'm not saying I agree with that though..). Then what?


Yes, it’s entirely on their ESG policies and not at all related to their quickly ageing population and the fact that their main provider of gas started a war on their border and cut their supply. That’s a very good take.


No not entirely the ESG policies. They cut their own supply when they cancelled Nord Stream 2 and confiscated Russian Euro reserves, essentially ending their ability to "print" a petro-euro for cheap energy. This was certainly a move in response to the war, but it was still their own choice.

Putin wanted to wage the war in Ukraine and still sell energy to Europe. Europe chose not to continue the 2nd part by various sanctions. Now Putin escalates by cutting further supply in response to sanctions (i.e. not getting paid for the energy he was shipping through pipelines)


Preach.

If this is really an existential threat, then it's counter-productive to use as just another political cudgel to score Twitter points on the "other" tribe. Doing so actually signals that it's business-as-usual, and that these "concerns" are worthy of the same treatment afforded any other political disagreement.

To take it one step further, to the extent that proposed fixes look like "big government" intervention, with little-to-no regard for conservative concerns or sensitivities, they will look like political power grabs and be treated accordingly.


> If this is really an existential threat, then it's counter-productive to use as just another political cudgel to score Twitter points on the "other" tribe.

This isn't what is happening. When you see injustice, it's a natural human impulse to get mad and start ascribing blame to particular individuals. It isn't people dishonestly using "just another political cudgel". It's people getting mad, as people have always done, and personalizing things.

That being said, yes, we don't have time for normal human psychology, though normal human psychology is what got us into and keeps us in this mess. Just as it's normal for people to get mad at other people, it's normal for the people accused to get defensive and deny or invert responsibility. "You don't really care! You're just trying to score points! Al Gore is fat and flies on planes!" Both sides are reacting normally, predictably, in counter-productive ways, like the various Palestinian liberation fronts in "The Life of Brian" killing each other in the sewers while the Romans look on in bemusement.


I generally feel it's mostly loud types trying to score Twitter points or Reddit karma; very few would genuinely get truly mad over something that was years in the making, by the whole population of the planet, and will take the whole population years to fix.


It will never not be inflammatory, because there is always incentive not to follow the self-sacrifice position. What happens when groups, nations etc simply decline to weaken themselves by using less energy? Those who pursue energy use and power will dominate those who do not. Now, if there's a collective of those who wont accept that position because of existential views on the matter, then what? How does it not inevitably escalate into inflammatory and polarizing rhetoric and action? Follow the logic to it's conclusions..


There is, actually.

The rich can be led to believe that reducing consumption is an elite status symbol, and an opportunity for posturing among their rich friends.

Though rich people will always consume more energy than poor people, there have been promising shifts, such as the rich competing to own the latest efficient electric car instead of competing to own the most fuel inefficient sports car.


"led to believe.."

By whom? And, all of them? How about on the level of nation-states where the true power lies. As national policy, entire nations/empires will be "convinced" as status symbol? No one will see the power on the table that everyone else has left?


Let me turn it around and think about it from another perspective. Imagine that I’m the leader of a company that is one of those sources of pollution. It sounds like my best option is to try and make the issue as political as possible in order to prevent groups from realizing their shared interest in regulating me. Classic divide and conquer.


Agreed. We should be able to view this propaganda for what it is -- inflammatory, vacuous rhetoric, devoid of substance; something which doesn't help us solve the real logistic issues we face in achieving clean, scalable energy.

My wager is on nuclear energy + hydrogen for portable energy. There are lots of issues with this model, but it's loads better than where we are today; and most importantly, it provides a way for us to solve the actual problem rather than slinging blame.


Agreed, except I'd like to see iron batteries small enough and efficient enough to replace lithium ion in vehicles but until then, I would like to see Hydrogen/Stirling Engine hybrid vehicles and iron batteries for power plants to reduce their on cycle time.


I don't want to be inflammatory and am genuinely curious: if I'm understanding you correctly, you are frustrated that this conversation alienates people like republicans, is that right?

What is a way to have a productive conversation and move towards meaningful action on this issue with "everybody who voted for trump or itemized their taxes or whatever"? What are the values to appeal to or what is the language that doesn't alienate?


Climate Change should be approached as an engineering problem that threatens everybody and not packaged as a "social justice" problem against the affluent.

One could as easily frame climate change as a problem caused by the global south industrializing and achieving higher living standards, leaving larger carbon footprints.

I'm not a republican. I'm a proponent of science, technology, and climate journalism that focuses on education instead of polarization.


If all the cat owners refused to believe in climate change, you'd see a lot of "climate change will kill more dogs in hot cars" type stories because the dog vote would become more valuable.

It's simple political calculus. Many of the people involved may prefer terrapins or tarantulas as pets, but if the cat-lovers have ruled themselves out, then anyone else who cares about animals will be courting the large dog vote in order to get things done on other issues.

The cat-lovers then saying "See it was all about dogs all along" just further isolates them and hands more power to the non cat-lovers.

As long as the cat lovers don't start a war based on this paranoia it's almost as good an outcome for society as them accepting the truth for climate change believers, and an extra bonus for dog lovers who get their democratic desires met because they are able to collaborate with people who disagree with them on some things but want to work together on climate/energy.


100% this.

If all we do is talk down to or try to control people we don’t agree with, the people we talk about will just keep doing the same to us.

Some of that will happen anyway, but you and I and everyone else reading this don’t have to be a part of it.


What if I tried to have a conversation about violent crime that opened that we need to talk about how registered democrats commit dramatically more violent crime than registered republicans?

We would end up arguing about everything but the ostensible topic.


The growing failure to speak about science, technology, and policy without politically coding the speech has caused irreparable damage to public science, technology, and policy discussion.

Perhaps the most egregious example was the liberal coding of vaccination during the pandemic, with the self-fulfilling prophecy that vaccine skepticism is for the other tribe of people who are bad.

You had people with preexisting conditions terrified of making a private medical decision because of the extreme political coding that both sides egged on to hysterical extremes.


It is a delusion to presume that politics can be avoided, escaped, or isolated. That institutions of power or prestige within society ever can or ever were devoid of politics, that they can exist and operate in a vacuum.

This ideological faith clouds judgement, more realism is necessary to navigate these issues.


I'll see your realism and raise you one.

The belief that science, technology, and environmental policy can transcend partisan politics is necessary for western society to function.

If you step over that in your eagerness to apply postmodern analysis, you'll introduce even greater challenges than the ones we're already barely capable of addressing.


The challenge is not introduced, it is always there to varying degrees. Again, your statement seems to presume you can have political enemies that will ignore the distinction (that they have existential differences) and put it aside. I'm not saying there is no way to address political reality, but that it cannot be ignored or presumed to not exist. At some points the intractable political conflict must be solved first before you can get back to science and technology amongst friends.


> Perhaps the most egregious example was the liberal coding of vaccination during the pandemic

What is "liberal coding of vaccination"?


I bet you'd agree crime is drastically higher amongst those not even registered or that don't even vote, almost as if party affiliation is not the most salient variable.


My point still stands that beginning a conversation about science, technology, or policy with your finger squarely aimed at people you don't like will only serve to start an argument with the people you don't like.


Often times groups that don't like each other have existential differences that can never be bridged. Negotiating in good faith with true enemies that aren't interested in compromise never works, except perhaps if there is power, threats or some sort of shared interest associated with the negotiation. I'm only pointing out that explaining your point to people that don't care and hate you and your beliefs will never achieve anything; they won't be persuaded if they don't want to be.


Dehumanizing and othering the opponent as beyond reason and justice in wartime is deeply immoral.

Doing it over peacetime class and partisan differences is deeply immoral and really stupid.


There is nothing inhuman about my descriptions; it is in fact all too human.


Well we’re talking about our fellow citizens. Are our differences really so extreme as to be existential?


Which way is it trending? The definition of intractable, existential differences is "war", in this case civil war. Certainly we're not there yet


Correct.

So what’s your answer?


I think you have to look to history for the repeated, seemingly inevitable recurrence of eventual conflict after decline or degradation of internal, or external political relations/interests/material conditions whatever. And what does game theory tell you to do in an inevitable situation w/ potential defectors/non-cooperators?

My answer is only an appreciation for "realism" or "realpolitik" in these matters, that people should not delude themselves at the point when enemies distinguish themselves to you by pattern of action and behavior over time. But you should always work for cooperation where possible of course. "Make friends" (where you can).

I'm mostly responding the point that seems to imply political differences can always be overcome, that everyone is always willingly persuadable, and that science and tech or any institutions for that matter can exist in a vacuum outside of politics. People just don't notice or think about political conflict when they are operating amongst political allies or issues don't rise to level of existential disagreement.


I know you’re doing that.

And I’m asking you personally.


When one side is in favor/fantasize of killing trans people, it is existential.


Some anonymous trolls gaslighting you online do not grant you a license to hate, dehumanize, and harm everybody who disagrees with your politics.


Most people who disagree with you doesn't hate you, and you wont know the difference until you have made an honest try to convince them.


That's true. I think people should put the idea in the back of their mind and consider it, that's all I'm saying. There are times when negation is occurring with someone that does not care at all what you are saying. And it will be seen by a pattern of behavior and action over time, after plenty of opportunity to show they don't want to be convinced.


"existential" The F-bomb of the current admins. Oh but let's raise the bar with "true enemies" and top it off with "people that don't care and hate you and your beliefs".


I'm a software engineer, I voted for Trump. Glad to see someone saying if it's real, then let's really all get on board with figuring out how to fix things.


If you're wealthy and hired a public relations consultant to manage the optics regarding your excessively large carbon footprint, this is the kind of argument they'd be making.


That was a sort of passive aggressive way of dismissing the parent comment as the enemy.


Accurate though.

I think Trump has been a wonderful diversion for particular sectors of society. All they have to do is accuse their critics of being Trump supporters and immediately they become the good guys. No matter their self-interested behaviour or transparent attempts at deflection.


We only need to talk about the carbon footprints of the rich because the environmental movement has positioned everything in terms of asceticism and sacrifice. No one talks about the unequal consumption of high end furniture, art, entertainment, or spa visits because all of those things are managed by price signals. The whole point of being rich is to be able to consume more. The problem is that we aren't pricing environmental impact.


The interesting yet potentially unpopular discussion I find here is that if the US which represents the large majority of that 1% were to really become introspective and start to break down all our ecologically destructive habits any country who doesn't share that level of self scrutability would breeze right past us on the global stage.

So we won't because it threatens our hegemony and there's no way to enforce this on every country in a way that actually matters so that it doesn't threaten their standing. So we're in a lock step dance into oblivion unless we can technology our way out of it and not rely on human nature.

That's why more efficient green technologies that don't also threaten a country's position on the world stage are important. Hopefully fusion works out!


The hegemony of the USA is not threatened. It’s a pipe dream and has been for at least a decade.

The world is firmly multipolar now and if the USA refuses to help in tackling the problem we all face, it’s just going to find itself more and more marginalised on the global scene which is exactly what has been happening since the Trump presidency.


I think that's more wishful thinking on your part than truth frankly. And even if I grant your point, then you can sub in China or any other nation with sway on the global stage instead of the US and my point will still stand: If going green undermines the growth of that nation or it's political dominance then going green won't happen.


Yesterday I saw a graph that blew my mind: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

I had no idea.


I think the per-capita graph is more meaningful

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...


Is that more meaningful? My understanding is the climate is unconcerned with the per capita figure. It is concerned with total CO2.

To demonstrate, add some countries like Qatar, Montenegro, and Kuwait to that graph.


> My understanding is the climate is unconcerned with the per capita figure. It is concerned with total CO2.

That it is concerned with the total CO2 is why per capita is the correct measure when determining if some group of people is doing better or worse than some other group of people at addressing CO2 emissions.

If you go by per country, then countries splitting or joining can change whether a group of people are emitting more or less than their fair share of the world's total CO2 budget. A high emissions country can simply split into multiple smaller low emissions countries. They are still emitting the same amount, but because they redrew some arbitrary lines on the map they are suddenly low emitters.

Take that to its logical conclusion and you get more and more splits, with the limit being a world of 7 billion countries, and per country then ends up being per capita anyway.


What happened in 2005-6 that started the emissions decline in the US and EU?

Interesting seeing the even more drastic decline in Russia’s emissions after 1991 with the fall of the USSR.

Edit: I found this anaylsis that credits the decrease towards many different factors, but largely driven by a switch from coal to natural gas. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-us-carbon-emissions...


That seems to correspond with China emissions greatly increasing. Outsourced manufacturing with even worse CO2 emissions?


According to the graph, China’s emissions started rising significantly in the 60s, after their cultural revolution, presumably.

Besides, outsourcing manufacturing to China started many years before the mid 2000s.


Outsourcing of high-energy industries is part of it, but also that was around the time that wind and solar started becoming cost-competitive with gas and coal power.


Would be helpful to see this graph on a per-capita basis. Without accounting for differences in population, the utility is somewhat limited.


Yes I think it's really encouraging, the gloom and doom messaging really causes most people to tune out or ignore the situation.


Capitalism works. CO2 became uncool, so big money is to be made from selling green things.


The market is not working. What you see on the graph is a global growth of emissions. CO2 is a global problem, and we haven't improved on it yet, in any significant fashion.

If you are implying that the market has reduced emissions in developped countries, i believe you're reading the situation wrong: China has become the world's factory, and its emissions have exploded, but the products manufactures are exported and consumed in the most developped countries. So effectively, developped countries emissions have grown. It's trivial to understand this when you observe the explosion of goods and services available in these countries, at the press of a button. There was never in history that many objects around us, in developped countries. Our footprint on the global world is growing rapidly and has never decreased.

The market is failing to deal with climate change because the environment costs (sometimes called externalities) are not part of the market dynamics. The market uses money, but has a blind eye to anything physical. Business is just money and human labor. No mines, no pollution. It's all dollars. Polluting a lake is a X million dollars fee, not an irreversible loss in a one-time resource.


Of course it’s working. It’s just not done yet. How else did the US and EU lines turn sharply down in the mid 2000’s? Outsourcing to China has been going on for decades prior.

Now people have caught on to the fact that we need locally made things. There’s a huge push among my peers for things that are Made in USA or Made in Canada, and food grown within 100 miles, and things that are durable vs things that are plastic. My colleagues who work in manufacturing automation cannot keep up with the insane demand for onshoring production. I’m talking about everyday objects, but to further illustrate the idea: which car brand is currently the coolest, and why, and where is it made?

All of this is just here - remember they have a sort-of-free market in China. Once they reach the GDP per capita where most people care about such things as the environment, the same dynamic will play out there.

I agree that we should price in externalities though.


“ Even if every individual person on the planet reduced their discretionary carbon footprint to zero, the electrical, industrial and agricultural systems of our economies would continue to emit greenhouse gases and make global heating worse”

So we don’t need to talk about individual’s footprints?


We need to talk about everybody with big footprints, not only individuals but industrial, agricultural, and other sectors of the economy as well.


It's pretty much the only acceptable thing to talk about, probably on purpose.


How do you eat an Elephant?


So internalize the externality. The status quo is that the non-rich subsidize the carbon footprint of the rich. I have no problem with <celebrity> flying privately. I have a problem with subsidizing that flight.


I've been concerned about climate change for decades and I think it is important to point out how certain fundamentals have changed in the past 30 years. Until recently, all that individual people could do was make sacrifices.

the main things you could do to make a difference: - give up certain foods - not drive a car - limit heating/air conditioning - limit consumerism / waste

But recently, things have changed dramatically.

- giving up meat in 2022 leaves you with many delicious options. From plant-based milks in every supermarket, to vegan options at every restaurant, to lab-grown (or otherwise convincing) meat if you want it - Solar panels on your roof and an electric car solve a lot - Limiting consumerism and air travel remain problems

My point is this: The way we need to talk to people about personal actions related to climate has changed a LOT. Now, you CAN make a real difference by making some easy (and often even economical) choices.


Has things changed or did market forces just adapt to the emerging profile of slightly guilty-feeling, upper-middle class Westerners? That now get to feel green for buying overpriced chickpeas and investing in a charging station for their home and a solar panel roof (wow—I get to increase the value of my property, save on my electricity bill when amortized over twenty years, and save the planet at the same time??)

This isn’t really a rhetorical question. It looks one way to me, but it’s hard to know. You pretty much have to dedicate yourself to a mini research project in order to honestly answer that question. That’s how capitalism obfuscates things for us and alienates us from what was ostensibly our original task, namely to save the planet.


That is a good question. I would answer by avoiding it completely and just pointing out that I used to have to say to people:

"Hey, give up something you love to save the planet"

and now I can say:

"Hey, get solar panels and then you can blast your A/C this summer for free!"


If BMW says that buying one of their EVs helps save the planet then that must be true.

I was questioning whether these folks were really saving the planet. The retort to that is not “doesn’t matter because I can tell them/convince them that they are”.


Certainly buying a brand-new EV (from any company) isn't making a positive impact on the environment. But, writ large, switching from ICE to electric cars is a giant step in the right direction. So I think it's safe to call that one a wash. Most people buying a new EV would have been buying a new ICE car anyway, and it is much better to further the electrification of transportation. Even if taking public transportation--a sacrifice--would be more helpful.


> But in these past 30 years, the emissions of the poorest 50% of people have grown hardly at all: They represented a little under 7% of global emissions in 1990, and they remain a little over 7% of global emissions today

In other words, their emissions grew over 60%, enough to keep pace with the emissions of everyone else.


No, fossil carbon lies at the heart of the climate crisis.

Equalising consumption is entirely othogonal and people who are arguing that fossil carbon and 'consumption' or 'quality of life' or 'energy' or anything else that isn't fossil carbon entering the atmosphere are the same thing are either not helping or actively hurting everyone, including those with low consumption now or in the past.

The policies to help climate change help the rich. They also help the poor. There's basically no-one that would be harmed by them in any meaningful way, and literally Billions who would benefit which is why it's so frustrating that we're not fixing the issue, and instead inventing reasons to not fix it.


Class warfare environmentalism seems especially counterproductive in the American context, where low-carbon behaviors are elite coded and the righteous middle class Everyman drives a lifted truck in the exurbs. At best there’s no constituency for this stuff. At worst, it encourages blocking decarbonization efforts as being too much in the interests of the rich / threatening to the middle class.


There's actually an automated Twitter account [0] that tracks celebrity jets and occasionally calculates CO2 emissions of the rich [1]. The biggest culprit is the singer Taylor Swift [2]:

>Swift topped a list of celebrities, with 170 flights emitting 8,293 metric tons of greenhouse gases.

If you scroll through these tweets you will see celebs taking 10 min flights several times a day. Yet these people have no qualms telling others to curtail their CO2 emissions, eat less beef and host of other hypocritical nonsense.

[0] https://twitter.com/CelebJets

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/CelebJets/status/1522979709277335...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-rep-excuse-private-jet...


If climate change was truly accepted to be a global endeavour, then the only reasonable metric by which to track progress is the per capita footprint. Today the per capita footprint of the first world outweighs the rest of the world by orders of magnitude. And yet, the focus always seems to be on a country's total emissions, thus putting more onus on highly populated third world countries. How do we expect those people to buy into this bargain? The hard truth is that, if we are to make any progress on climate change, then first world countries must drastically cut their consumption and downgrade their lifestyles. That kind of a lifestyle is simply not sustainable across 8 billion people. But we cannot say that only some people are privileged to access that lifestyle, while the remaining must sacrifice to save the planet.


You could argue that having more children, leading to a larger national population is also a 'lifestyle choice'


The people who made the lifestyle choice to have more children are long gone. We are not appealing to them. We are appealing to the people born today who are not responsible for the size of the population.

It's ultimately a consequence of human progress that we face such population problem. A more reasonable approach towards this would be to share lands and resources and spread people out a bit. But that's a whole different problem and the first world would rather have policies to increase their own population size than immigrate people into their lands.


The same with the west's polluting infrastructure, built decades ago.

Focusing on how dirty the rich world is per capita just gives other nations an excuse to do nothing, even though some of them are now actually the bigger problem because of their huge population.

The most telling measure is the growth (or otherwise) in emissions.


Changing existing infrastructure is obviously quite expensive. But relying less on infrastructure is not. Reducing energy expenditure, consuming fewer goods, immigrating people instead of outsourcing manufacturing, reducing military footprint (some first world militaries create as much carbon footprint as entire countries altogether), are all very reasonable sacrifices we can make to make the climate war more equitable across the human race.


Carbon footprint is a term invented by BP to deflect blame away from entities such as themselves onto individuals.

Individuals as in regular people of course. But really, so-called carbon footprint is more of a systemic issue than some naughty sin/indulgence that the rich commit.


I think it's fair to say that most people that have to take a car to work are stuck in the system, and that it would be hard or impossible to change that (city center rent being too high, no jobs outside the mega-cities, etc).

However for the rich, options are plentiful. Taylor swift has really every options available to her. She could stop working all together. She's set for life already. She could work only on local concerts. She could do a "slow" world tour and take the boat to do it, as a symbol. She doesn't have to fly to LA for a fun diner with a celebrity friend. Etc etc.

Millionaires and billionaires definitely can decide what they want to do. They don't answer for anyone for food and shelter. They make their own rules. In that sense, i think it's fair for the rest of us to judge them hard for a lavish lifestyle that inspires the masses, and really goes against humanity's survival.


Swift could also use her time and energy to focus on what policies on a national scale can help lower emissions, and figure out what it would take for us to make political change towards a sustainable first-world lifestyle (political as in: a movement to make it feasible to live closer to work, to make mass transit better… not individual nonsense microchoices). I’ll judge her more harshly for that.


I don't think she has the baggage to think about such complex topics. She's a singer. I think it's too much to expect her to rethink our society model. On the other hand, i think as an ordinary citizen, she knows that private jets pollute a lot. And that she can do something about easily.


While it may have been popularized by BP this is by no means a reason to ignore the emissions caused by an individual.

Call it something else if you'd like but individuals do cause emissions and they should take responsibility to lower and remove them.


Individuals cause emissions but it’s not rational to make that the locus of attention. Not rational if you want to lower emissions, that is. It is rational for BP’s marketing department, however.


The top of the pyramid are important because they set what the majority of us will want to emulate. If Swift is flying her private jet, then young high-schooler and adults will calibrate on that and fly to Thailand for the holidays because they perceive it desirable to fly around.

If we had influencers who would take a stand, it would be very beneficial at global scale actually. Let's say the top football/soccer players would decline to attend the world cup because having A/C'd stadiums in Qatar, and flying both the athletes and the fans there is generating large emissions. If they took that stand and shared it to their 50M followers-each mimetic fanbase, the benefits for society would be wonderful.

It's worth pursuing exemplarity of our elites because it sets the flagpost for everyone else. Redefining success from rolex, sport car, big house, to let's say skilled handcraft, raising horses, and living in a small rural community; that would really be beneficial to us all.


Do you want to buy a Rolex if Swift wears one? Or Celine Dione or whatever your idol is.


People buy rolex to imitate "successful" people. Very few buy rolex because it's useful to them or they are into clock engineering. Rolex doesn't output ads that explain how the clock works; instead they pay celebrities to show up with their watches ostensibly.

Look around you at society. People buy brand cloth like $300 white tshirt because of the brand logo on it. I think it's pretty established how humans behave on that regard. Now if you're not convinced (it seems), i suggest you google some sociology studies and look into something more scientific than my example. Feel free to share if my observations are proven untrue.


why does there seem to be this false dichotomy in the comments here of, if climate change is caused by individual actions, it cannot be caused by cooperations and vica versa? Both of these are true and they are entangled. And the solution is obviously on both fronts as well. We need people to not fly long distance for team offsites and family reunions once a quarter, we also need to have changes in legislation/political system to make it easier to go to work without a car, have changes in legislation to require flight companies to carbon offset helping with the first point etc etc etc. Why does the focus have to be on either or, I don't see it.


or in other words why does everyone here think that the moment we talk about individual responsibility nobody will ever think or talk about cooperations responsibilities and large scale legislative solutions anymore? What is the precedent here that I am missing?


What if it's about who can make others sacrifice, and just not do so themselves? What if we don't want to reduce impact? What happens when the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must? It's inevitably going to be a conflict over resources and power, like all of human history. Those who willingly self-sacrifice will get dominated by those who do not. Then what? Appeals to universal morality will only work to diminish those who agree to follow them and strengthen those who don't.


I’m interested in seeing how the tone of the comments changes after the title change of this thread.

I’ve noticed posters bringing up two concerns:

A) Framing anything as being the fault of “the rich” is divisive or offensive.

B) Anything that’s divisive or offensive is counterproductive.

without explaining the bridge between A and B:

A2) People are willing to support policies that hurt the climate out of spite because they believe that everyone votes entirely out of emotion.


Personally, I think it’s more the traditional HN egoism which in a lot of way is the traditional American egoism. Most HNers seem very happy to talk about fighting climate change as long as you don’t point out the role of their own privilege life style in it.


I agree. It’s interesting to see people make big lofty statements about “the nature of the climate movement” or how climate change is the result of some inherent economic flaw in the way consumption is priced, or (to me, most comically) internalizing externalities.

In reality, these seem like a fancy and pedantic way to avoid saying “I am willing to leverage both my wealth and the looming threat of the deaths of poor people from climate change to secure the fealty and deference to my feelings that my status entitles me to.”


Because "Eat the rich" has never ended in a disaster?


On a similar note, I'd also like to see the conversation shift from taxing the labour to taxing the wealth.


A third of Pakistan, a country 1.2 times the size of Texas, is underwater due to climate change related flooding. Can the first world ever really fully repay for all the damage they've done. It seems that a genuine effort to would completely bankrupt them. How much growth in GDP would be wiped away if we truly put an effort into internalizing these "economic externalities"?


A recent episode of the podcast More or Less addressed that statistic. It turns out that 40% of provinces in Pakistan have declared an emergency due to flooding. Only (a still enormous and heartbreaking) 10-12% of the country is actually under water.


It will only get worse from here.

Maybe instead of arguing whether externalities should be internalized, maybe we consider how much of the externality should be internalized.


On the other hand, a lot of GDP would be saved if we stopped putting countries one third underwater!


If we reduce global population to 100M, most of those problems would be solved.


When there's a person, there's a problem. When there's no person, there's no problem.


Agent Smith agrees with that.

Also it's a manifestation of utilitaristic induced psychopathy, of course.


1. What do we do with mega-genocidal ideas like that?

2. Populations of psychopaths do not form stable civilizations


How do you reduce the population to 100M in a way that does not make you look worse than Hitler?


Make food and energy expensive, forbid agriculture, release genetically designed disseases...


Expand access to birth control to every woman world-wide.


Imagine being a problem to figure out how do you look (propaganda) instead of having done an unspeakable evil while envisioning yourself as a savior of humanity.

That's precisely how the Stalin/Mao/Hitlers types are fabricated.


Does not contain "tax" therefore not serious.


> “Driving” signifies something very different for the American worker at a big-box store who is forced to commute in her car to the mall versus the private equity manager speeding a gleaming Lamborghini around the cliffs of the Italian Riviera

Good grief. Feel free to write out your resentment as much as you like. But there’s no need to pretend this is about helping or changing anything.


If you're serious about making sacrifices to stop climate change, don't have kids.

Oh, you're not that serious? Too much of a sacrifice to make? You think other people should make sacrifices, but having a family is important to you? I see.

How about this - you don't tell me what to do, and I won't tell you what to do.




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