In the early 1990s, per capita emissions in the UK were six times those in China. And before anyone asks: Yes, these are consumption based numbers.
Posted by davidbauer
In the early 1990s, per capita emissions in the UK were six times those in China. And before anyone asks: Yes, these are consumption based numbers.
Posted by davidbauer
13 Comments
Interesting. UK putting out less overall (due to change in powerplant fuel etc) with small population increase while China remains at similar output levels while population declines?
A couple of key pulls from the article:
This accounts for the fact that the UK imports a bunch of stuff from China, so Chinese emissions caused by manufacturing UK goods are attributed to the UK, not China.
This also doesn’t include shipping or aviation, which the article says would likely be higher for Brits.
I was hoping for numbers arriving energy produced per capita as well – my understanding is that China’s energy mix is more polluting than ours, but they don’t use as much energy per person as we do, but that information is a few years old.
So, at the moment China is polluing the environment over 20 times more than GB.
China continues to boom, and puts their economy and people above any other consideration.
Well, that’s disturbing. Given the huge difference in populations (68m vs 1411m), that means China is emitting 20x more than UK
This also assumes that China even tracks this stuff and reports it accurately. Commies aren’t exactly known for their honesty
Looking at articles from that early 2000’s time frame when China was really ramping up power show some stark contrast in their projections compared to reality. They did not see the China solar boom coming at all.
Granted, they still have a long way to go – as the article points out, it’s still mostly coal. But it’s significantly less coal than was predicted 15-20 years ago. At least 10% of total power less than the projections at that time are renewables instead of coal.
As a note, sustainable emissions are about 2.5t per capita. Both have a long way to go.
Can confirm you need much more air conditioning in China on average.
Wow, who would’ve thought. A country transitioning from the primary to the secondary sector generates a lot of CO2. Such a thing has never happened before. If only there were countries that had already gone through this development and could serve as a model for climate-friendly energy production and proper resource management. So that alternatives to cheap, simple coal power had existed early on.
But what am I saying. Obviously, China alone is responsible for climate crisis, and until their emissions hit zero, there’s no point in changing anything over here!!!!!!!!11!
This is 2022. Id like to see how it is now with all the electric cars, wind power they have been producing.
Who cares when China is dumping orders of magnitude more total emissions.
China has over 1,118 operational coal power plants. Last year reached an all time high in the construction new coal fired power plants in China.
Yet some of that Carbon is attributed to UK in this graph because they buy Chinese products.
You have to be doing some incredible mental gymnastics to say that those new Chinese coal power plants are actually all the UKs fault. I’m sure if UK didn’t buy any Chinese products all their carbon emissions would just disappear….