One of the major drivers of the exceptional heat building within Earth’s atmosphere has reached levels beyond anything humans have ever experienced, officials announced on Thursday. Carbon dioxide, the gas that accounts for the majority of global warming caused by human activities, is accumulating “faster than ever,” scientists from NOAA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego found.
“Over the past year, we’ve experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press release. “Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever.”
That’s the scapegoat argument from US industry and politicians. The only reason the US is second to China in carbon emissions is because of the excessive outsourcing of US manufacturing to China.
The US is responsible for the most carbon emissions worldwide.
Who controls the manufacturing processes in China? Who accepts the manufacturing contracts? Who controls their energy grid?
Gotta keep that finger pointed, huh? I’m American, and I’m fully aware of our massive contribution to carbon emissions, and the responsibility that puts on our industry and consumers to reduce and mitigate. Pointing fingers at China gives American industry a false benchmark for comparison.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-which-countries-are-historically-responsible-for-climate-change/
Implying that the US needs to not only retrofit their own grid but also China’s is nonsensical…
China has benefitted economically from their emissions, they are the second largest economy in the world. They’re not some backwater third-world country at this point, they can afford to take responsibility for getting their own emissions under control. They in fact must, because no one can afford to fix their problems for them.
Perhaps they could save on emissions by closing down some of their concentration camps.
Manufacturing creates emissions. Period. The US outsources over 84% of its manufacturing to China, so the emissions generated by said manufacturing are effectively US emissions. Climate scientists agree. Politicians and US industry deny responsibility.
https://www.scmr.com/wp_content/e2open_wp_outsourcing_mfg_011316.pdf
And not just the US. The whole western world effectively runs on Chinese coal.
And when China get around to outsourcing it all to Africa which is already on the way to being China’s China, we’ll still be running it all on fossil fuels.
You can try taxing everything based on its ecological footprint, sanctions on non-complying countries, etc, but all that will mean in the long term is prices will go up, people will feel poorer, and you’ll be voted out in favour of somebody who doesn’t give a shit.
That’s true. I’m only saying that when you add the carbon emitted by US industry in China to the total of domestic emissions, the US is the world’s leading contributor.
It’s time we stop allowing US industry to point the finger at China by parroting that falsity. The US could produce domestically and responsibly, or outsource to a climate responsible nation, while consumers become more mindful of offending products. That won’t happen as long as we continue to blame the nation making our products for making our products.
No…the manufacturing is occurring in China, it’s literally coming out of chinese facilities that are controlled by the Chinese state and industry management. One could just as easily say it’s China’s responsibility to turn down manufacturing contracts based on their inability to take those contracts without delivering huge amounts of CO2.
It’s entirely unrealistic to think the US can or should fix China’s grid and industrial processes. It’s literally a non-starter and is essentially just saying China is “owed” the right to pollute because other countries did in the past.
And even if you actually believed what you’re claiming, what is the solution here? The US scales back manufacturing and craters the world economy (including for China’s)? Or are they suppose to pay their own GDP out to China so the Chinese government doesn’t have to scale back their imperial ambitions and focus on solving domestic issues that are destroying the planet? Where do you realistically think China is going to put that hypothetical payday if they’re already unwilling to scale back their own wasteful, ancillary domestic programs?
You’re trying to pretend China isn’t the second largest economy in the world, it’s just not convincing. It’s way more efficient for countries that can afford to fix their own emissions, like China and the US, to do so and then help poor, developing countries that actually need financial and material support meet their climate goals.
Pretending the US can fund the entire world’s transition is, frankly, idiotic because your same backwards-looking logical gymnastics can be applied to almost every country that is smaller than the US. It’s an unserious solution.
All I’m saying is that climate scientists confirm that US manufacturing demands are creating a large portion of the CO2 from China, so the US should stop using them as a scapegoat, and accept responsibility as the world’s largest contributor to climate change.
It doesn’t need a wall of text to combat.
There is no “scapegoat”, it’s politically and financially impossible for the US to “take responsibility” for China’s grid emissions, even tankie’s should be able to understand that hard reality.
It’s the Chinese energy production that’s driving climate change, what they are choosing to do with that energy is irrelevant, whether it’s manufacturing for other countries or running a billion surveillance cameras, it’s their unsustainable grid that creates the emissions. The US cannot force China upgrade their power grid.
We could produce domestically and responsibly, outsource to a climate responsible nation, or reduce consumption of offending products. It’s on us, and pointing the finger at China for making our Walmart plastic junk doesn’t address anything. It further obfuscates the problem and justifies our current emissions as “2nd largest” contributor when we in fact lead the world in emissions.
To solve the climate crisis the ~1 billion people in global north will absolutely need to significantly bail out the global South. There is no clear development path that doesn’t go through heavy fossil fuel usage, and it should go without saying we probably can’t even improve the living standard of another billion people, let alone seven billion without basically just giving them money and technology to skip the fossil fuel step. Countries in the global north have actually agreed to this framework, it’s just that noone has actually made good on the promise yet. So… not only is it not nonsense… it’s an active dispute between developed countries and developing countries.
China is not the global south, the hell are you on?
So you’re essentially saying exactly what I was criticizing at the very beginning, that China gets a free pass for their emissions and are entitled to pollute, that the climate will forgive them and the US will somehow magically save the day and bail out the second largest economy on the planet while China ramps up their own unsustainable consumer culture.
What are you knuckleheads going to be saying as China continues to shift from manufacturing useless shit for other countries and is instead producing the same shit for their own population? It’s literally already happening right this very moment. Is the climate going to give them a pass for those emissions too because “US bad”?
Your politics have made your conception of climate change completely incoherent. The climate simply does not care if China really really wants to be an empire and feels that they’re entitled to unsustainable growth. The gas they are producing in their country, both in manufacturing and in their other sectors, is the single largest concrete thing fucking the planet up. The US could finish switching their manufacturing chains away from China tomorrow and China would still be producing massive amounts of emissions.