China Installed More Solar Panels Last Year Than the U.S. Has in Total
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China Installed More Solar Panels Last Year Than the U.S. Has in Total::China installed more new solar capacity last year than the total amount ever installed in any other country.
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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.
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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.