I love when people like you post with no concept of "per capita". Then there's always frustration at the people who do understand the concept and realize the "point" is simply a result of ignorance.
China is at 30% renewable energy. The US is at 21%. And the president of the dirtiest country in the world, lots of smart people are saying it, that's just what they call the US these days, they say, passed an executive order to ban new solar and wind power. Sad!
If China is using more renewables, then why are they producing way more GHG? See how this line of reasoning is flawed? This reality undermines your snark about having a higher % mix or per capita production, which is an incomplete rebuttal and serves greenwashing arguments.
Imagine you have a buffet. You have five people who each take 1 steak. Then you have one person who takes 4 steaks.
You are the person saying the one person taking 4 steaks is okay. The problem is the selfish four people who are eating 1 steak each. If they all stopped, the other guy could have 9 steaks.
Which is of course a silly proposition. The one guy could simply eat fewer steaks.
China is also the center of world manufacturing. The fact they make almost everything on earth but still have lower per capita emissions than the US is impressive.
LOL. You try to get pedantic about per capita and use a buffet analogy, but don't even get the mapping to the problem right or make a point that helps you.
China is responsible for >30% of ghg emissions and for 90% of incremental CO2 emissions growth in the last decade. Their population didn't grow more than ~2%! Your buffet analogy misses the constraint about the earth's carbon budget being limited to keep global warming to +1.5c. China is effectively blowing through everyone's budget so that no steak will be left and running the buffet out of business.
Not when actors report false numbers. China's track record is terrible on honest environmental reporting [0] and their power consumption has been greenwashed with electrification that makes a minor portion of their GHG growth [1].
You have a 12 year old article about manual reporting of smog levels that's moot given the past decade of gas measuring satellites, and you ignore the fact that China isn't a closed country, it's one routinely visited by internationals including those from the IEA that directly inspect energy infrastructure.
You're saying that air-quality sensors at a location is "manual" reporting? That's your critique? What's manual about it? It sounds like an automated, objective sensor. Even if it were manual, the premise is that China is asking other nations not to release its air data. A 2012 article shows this has been happening for some time. Further, you need to elaborate what your point is (and answer "so what?") about gas measuring satellites.
> and you ignore the fact that China isn't a closed country, it's one routinely visited by internationals
How am I ignoring that? When did I say they were a closed country? Even more bizarre, you're introducing a strange claim that China isn't closed when China routinely scores terribly (worst category) on censorship and freedom of the press [0].
Here's another source [1]
> “China is making great efforts to improve the accuracy of its emissions inventories,” says Yuli Shan of Birmingham University in the U.K., who has tracked its data for years. But he notes that an assessment of China’s fossil-fuel emissions by the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research found 23 percent more than recorded in the country’s U.N. submission for the same year.
You're welcome to provide resources that refute my argument, and I'll review.
Your claim that "China's the biggest emitter and doesn't care." is nonsense.
They care, they've bought more absolute effort to the issue than most countries, their future plans and projections are out there and on per capita basis they are doing better than most.
Your only line on this is that the country with the largest population has the largest energy consumption and emmissions.
As mentioned above [0], the per capita hand waving doesn't work when China's responsible for 90% of earth's CO2 emissions growth in the last decade (c.f. 2% population growth) and blowing through the globe's carbon budget.
In the future, good luck landing on claims you'll actually stand behind (still laughing at your revised definition of "manual") or advance your argument.
China is at 30% renewable energy. The US is at 21%. And the president of the dirtiest country in the world, lots of smart people are saying it, that's just what they call the US these days, they say, passed an executive order to ban new solar and wind power. Sad!