RegGuheert said:
The point is that it makes little sense to say "US CO2 emissions have been decreasing" when we have been offshoring our manufacturing operations to China and India for decades. So does it really make sense to count China's and India's emissions growth as somehow THEIR emissions? Perhaps one would do that if you want to feel better about how we are doing. But that doesn't change the situation.
Despite offshoring of heavy manufacturing, we still have higher per capita emission than China.
I still think if we want to go the 'fairness angle' per capita rather than per country emissions seem like a more appropriate basis. (We could just plot California or Ohio and say its tiny compared to China, so 'it all good.')
On that basis, we and the EU have similar lifestyles and expectations for energy services, yet the US average per capita CO2 is
2x the Eu rate per capita. Why? Does that not imply that we could reduce ours close to 50% without a significant impact/cost to quality of life.
Similarly, CA has much lower per capita home energy usage than the rest of the US....as a result of public policy. Does that not imply that the rest of the US could adopt more stringent codes without making housing hopelessly unaffordable?
China is still increasing it per capita emissions as it develops. They are likely to asymptote their standard of living to that of the EU/US according to the standard curve (defined by Japan and Korea). When they reach our standard of living, should they have US per capita emissions or EU per capita emissions?? That factor of 2 will matter! If their per capita is the same as ours, what will we be able to say about it then??