this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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Good news for one of the planet's most polluting countries.
That is producing for the rest of the world and especially for the west. It’s hypocritical to blame china while buying stuff that had to be cheaper and cheaper.
I don't think that absolves China of any blame. They're still choosing to produce cheap goods at the expense of the planet, because it's good business for them too.
If not them then it'd be someone else. Clearly they're starting to take polluting seriously.
If you look at CO2 emissions per capita then China is actually doing better than countries like Canada, the US, and Singapore. Assuming I haven't completely misread that table.
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
This is a list of sovereign states and territories by per capita carbon dioxide emissions due to certain forms of human activity, based on the EDGAR database created by European Commission. The following table lists the 1970, 1990, 2005, 2017 and 2022 annual per capita CO2 emissions estimates (in kilotons of CO2 per year). The data only consider carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and cement manufacture, but not emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry Over the last 150 years, estimated cumulative emissions from land use and land-use change represent approximately one-third of total cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Emissions from international shipping or bunker fuels are also not included in national figures, which can make a large difference for small countries with important ports. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report finds that the "Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU)" sector on average, accounted for 13-21% of global total anthropogenic GHG emissions in the period 2010–2019.
^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^
CO2 emissions are carefully curated and we are not even that good at calculating them. I wouldn't trust any of this info coming from China let alone from any nation.
Do you have a better metric?
Big dog 2 months... If you knew how companies figure out their pollution metrics you would be very sad.
As for a better metric, I don't know. Everything is tied to cost so it's really dumb
Not sure why you're so hung up on dogs or 2 months. The thread still shows up in searches and you're clearly getting updates on it. Unless there's some evidence to suggest the information in this thread is now obsolete, there's no reason not to respond.
@esteeyou@lemmy.world made a claim and provided evidence. Unless there's better evidence to the contrary it's reasonable to accept the claim. My children sometimes still respond to arguments with, "Nuh uh." I generally expect more from adults.
Yep you got me, I make shit up on the fly.
Apparently.
That's too bad.
Too bad why? You had a counterargument or something?
Because an informed response would have been more interesting.
Oh okay, I feel like responding now so I reread.
So the evidence they provided was what I said is carefully curated. I work in sustainability and I see how people mess with numbers. I also know info from China is famous for fudging numbers as well. I don't think CO2 is a good metric as it is difficult to track. The way companies track CO2 now is usually by spend so they convert $$$ to CO2 output through a calculator. It's really not efficient.
You asked me what is an alternative and I said I don't know. I really don't, unless we have a way of tracking what comes in and out of a business and how it is used.
OK It sounds like there's only one metric we can use to evaluate how much China pollutes.
The metric is widely used by various academics, government agencies and independent organizations. We have no better metric and that metric says that China doesn't pollute that much.
That leaves 2 possibilities; the metric actually provides no information at all or it still provides some information.
If it provides no information AND we don't have anything that does (ie a better metric) that means we literally have absolutely no information at all about how much China pollutes at all. That means we can't make any intelligent claims about how much China pollutes or how much they're fudging the number because there's no comparison to make.
If it does provide some information we're left with a situation where all of the imperfect information supports the claim that China doesn't pollute much.
Either way, the evidence as you've classified it, doesn't support the claim that China is, "one of the planet’s most polluting countries," which was the original claim of this thread. It is, by definition, a baseless conjecture.
CO2 is NOT the only metric being captured by global agencies, it's just what was said in the comment above and is usually the target to showcase how responsible the use is basically. I am not saying that the metric in itself is bad but it is easy to mislead. China is not trustworthy when it comes to capturing data like this because their companies are basically required to make greater China look good. This is a separate beast.
If you look into how a body like the EPA calculates their emissions they reference the greenhouse protocol. In an ideal world, all use and all waste goes through a method like this protocol and individuals calculate their emissions. Governing bodies and academics alike would be using software to track each ounce of output based on raw materials. If you purchased or created a good, you should be able to track and show end of life for each individual component. This is just not the case. People don't know what is in the stuff they buy. There is a flurry of life cycle analyses cradle to gate or gate to gate or cradle to grave being produced currently to bridge this gap but it currently is not the standard for identifying output.
How does a company like Walmart track all of the emissions produced (by their farmers, their logistics, the raw material manufacturing, etc.) if it's difficult? The answer is they give ballpark numbers based on how much was purchased. Companies now have decided to use a number that was calculated based on various spends and convert that to output.
How does a country like the US measure then? In the US there are regulatory bodies that check if what we say is true but it's a complete joke. There waaaaaayyy too much data for these bodies to go through so they usually report whatever the company reports.
Circling back to China and why I say not to trust the CO2 calculations is that these companies are not trustworthy. I'll be honest I don't know if there are similar regulatory bodies in China for emissions but I doubt it. It's what allows companies to do illegal dumping into rivers and let's many claim net zero. I'm assuming based on the time you responded to me that you are in China so maybe you can elucidate me on how I get this wrong.
I agree that CO2 is an imperfect measure and you don't seem to be making the claim that CO2 has an SNR of 0 (ie it carries no information at all). We seem to agree on the core of your central three paragraphs so I won't comment on them.
You've stated multiple times now that you don't know any better measures than CO2. So even if there are other measures they're just as bad or worse. Given this lack of any better metric, on what verifiable evidence are you basing any of your conclusions?
The same way you got your conclusions about China's pollution wrong, by misapplying evidence and jumping to conclusions.
It's interesting that you should phrase your question that way. The cheap answer would be to point out that you're not using "elucidate" correctly. You're missing a preposition. It's also odd to use "get" instead of "got" here. A corrected version of your sentence might be, "...maybe you can elucidate to me how I got this wrong." It's cheap in the sense that personal attacks are easy and do little to advance a conversation. It would be just as silly of me to use your grammar error as evidence that you're a foreign national as it is for you to use the timing of my posts as evidence of my location.
You might then suspect that I might still be a foreigner who's studied too much English grammar. That would be correct. It turns out that when I speak my native language, other native speakers can sometimes pinpoint the exact district in Vienna where I was born. These days, none of my neighbors speak German. They love the Sox and rock their "Dunkies".
Just as in the case of estimating China's pollution levels, cavalier use of evidence leads to erroneous conclusions.
English is not my first language either and I type the way I speak. So I might say things wrong but language was never my strong suit. I only commented because I have a friend from mainland China who only speaks around this time.
I hope we can both agree that using evaluations made by China is not always the best. I could have replaced CO2 with # of immigrants or %breast feeding and we would have the same issues. However, the use of CO2 as a metric for a developing country is specially odd given how difficult it is to track in places like the US for EU. Hence, I say don't trust it.
Can we agree there or is this all still baseless conjecture and erroneous conclusions?
I can certainly agree that there is no evidence to suggest that China is "one of the most polluting countries in the world". I haven't seen a shred of evidence to support that claim. It is entirely baseless.
On the other hand, the claim that China's per capita pollution is lower than that of most industrialized nations is supported by evidence. It is the best evidence we have too, unless you've discovered a better metric in the last few days.
A claim that imperfect evidence is equivalent to no evidence is baseless and will lead to erroneous conclusions.
No, it’s not hypocritical. Yes, anyone with half a brain knows China makes a huge chunk of the world’s stuff.
A nation can make choices as to what energy sources they use and China went balls to the wall with coal. That wasn’t a choice the buyers of Chinese products made.
Lol look what they are spending the money they earn from those industries. At least they are not solely funding decades long genocide but actually doing something about the emissions they take on.
You‘re right. We should move production to cleaner countries.
Production will always have some waste and pollution. China has high pollution because we do a lot of production there. As I pointed out above, on both a per-capita and a per-production basis China pollutes less than many industrialized nations (US. Germany, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Taiwan) and many developing nations (Singapore, Malaysia).
Given current manufacturing data, moving production out of China to other countries would likely increase pollution.
Only way many western countries were able to slow their rise in CO2 emissions. Despite outsourcing their emissions to China, the US still emits twice the CO2 per capita compared with China.
Lots of that is cattle for meat, BTW, not just energy production.
And why are they one of the most polluting countries?
Bad manufacturing practices that exploits a poor labor force. They use this to their advantage to persuade western companies to provide cheap service at the cost of their workforce and sustainability. They then turn around and make these grand plans of Eco friendly targets while their populace regularly burn their trash with little regulation. Then some regulation agency comes in and turns a blind eye to some foul shit as long as they are paid accordingly to play ball.
When you look at the data China pollutes less than the US both on a per-capita and a per-production basis.
Big dog why are you going back in time 2 months to respond to this
Why not? Have the facts changed since then?
I don't even know what you are responding toqnd don't care to look
So you're just going to spew out words without even checking the context of those words?
Brilliant!
Remind me then
Remind you of the thing you could literally check by clicking on the "show context" link?
Too lazy
Actually they are poluting for you to buy your stuff cheaper, who is responsible for the polution of your stuff? Dowa not make any sense to blame them for factories that the west choosed to put there.
They could always say no
polluting to meet the online shopping demands of western countries
87% of China's energy comes from non renewable and they aren't one of the most polluting. They ARE the most polluted country on the planet.
And saying China leads the way is bogus. Per capita for renewable they are one of the worst.
Saying China made the most solar panels is bullshit when they have over a billion people, the USA is actually far ahead of China when it comes to renewable energy.
I expect nothing less from a news site that has been caught multiple times in the past for spouting pseudoscience.
A lot of people don't realize how quickly China is changing. Things that were true just a few decades ago are often no longer true.
Once China decided that pollution was a problem they went all in on addressing it. China has massive reforestation projects, huge incentives to switch to EVs, and much tighter energy efficiency standards.
Solar isn't even their only renewable energy source. China gets about equal amounts from solar, wind and hydro https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/energy-transition/013124-coal-still-accounted-for-nearly-60-of-chinas-electricity-supply-in-2023-cec ~~together they make up a little less than half of their total energy production and the ratio keeps improving.~~ correction: those are projected ratios, not current ratios.
Of course, on a per capita basis, China isn't even close to being a top polluter. Unless you think that people in smaller countries deserve to pollute more, per-capita is the better measurement. China looks a little worse if you do that but it's still far from a top polluter by that metric.