Why is Polution per GDP a better measure?
They wanted a measure that makes China look better.
Why is Polution per GDP a better measure? I don’t care how much they export when they’re killing the planet at a faster rate every year with no intentions to stop it.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Because humans just existing produces far less pollution than humans producing a lot of stuff.
It’s trivial to say that a bunch of hunter-gatherers don’t pollute much but we’re not generally willing to relegate people to living in the stone age.
Our economic choices have a much larger impact on pollution than our personal choices do. Ideally we’d have a measure of pollution per consumption. Everyone would have a score that calculates the total pollution created by the entire supply chain that supports their choices. So if a mine in Africa is polluting so a Chinese guy can have a nice air condition, that should be counted for China; and if a factory in China pollutes so that a guy in the US can have a new Iphone, that should be counted for the US.
I’m not aware of any such data set. The closest proxy would be GDP or GNP. That essentially provides a measure of how much pollution the total lifestyle of that population produces.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
You should be pretty happy with China then. They have a replacement rate just over one. That’s lower than the US or Europe.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They’re attempting to raise the replacement rate to maintain their still massive population. It is problematic.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
So you’re saying there are just too many Chinese people? How many should there be?
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
From 2021 to 2022 they added another 38 Million Tons of CO2 to their 10,575 Mt
If they want to reverse that in one year then they need to have 4,166,667 less people plus extra to account for increasing CO2 per person. Obviously thats a nonsense plan, they need to set a target year and slowly change their replacement rate with overcorrection over the duration, but thats precisely what they are not doing.
AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
It’s a better measure because western countries outsource manufacturing and associated pollutions to other countries and then pretend to be green.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And China is continuing to increase market share on goods like electronics and vehicles, by choice.
The USA has the highest GDP in the world and has a CO2 per GDP of 0.26 to Chinas 0.44. Are you saying China is just pretending to be green and the USA is a beacon of hope for the environment?
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It’s a better measure but not a perfect one. The big problem with the US-China GDP comparison is that the US has much more of a service economy while China has a much more manufacturing based economy.
Manufacturing pollutes much more than services do but services don’t exist without the manufacturing.
That’s why I was saying a better measure would be pollution per GNP. That would cut out services and basically just count manufacturing output. That would make sense because it’s the biggest source of pollution and it’s the source you can do the most about (ie there’s a lot of room to make many parts of the manufacturing chain cleaner).
Nobody is as green as their marketing suggests and China is no exception. China is making huge investments in green tech and there’s still a long way to go.
AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I am not comparing them with USD, the user who brought up GDP did because their source specifies it.