Take a look at "China: Consumption-based accounting: how do emissions compare when we adjust for trade?"

> Annual consumption-based emissions are domestic emissions adjusted for trade. If a country imports goods the CO₂ emissions needed to produce such goods are added to its domestic emissions; if it exports goods then this is subtracted.

2018 had 8.96 bn carbon tons in consumption out of a totla of 9.96 bn total tons (~90% consumption)

The biggest amount of greenhouse gasses that china emits is from coal power plants. Naturally, figuring out what amount of electricity was used in the production of the exported goods is basically impossible, which is why its considered consumption in their data.

I'm sure the spirit of it is still correct (that most of their co2 emissions are for internal products/usage), but its hard to take that conclusion at face value when they didn't even mention the caveat that they ignore the by far biggest contributor of their emissions and consider it consumption by default.

We have moved the problem around, but we are not actually getting around to living differently.

The US's emissions per capita is more than 3 times the worldwide average. So we still need to cut our emissions by a factor of 3 just to be average. But considering we are the richest country in the world, I think it's reasonable we attempt to display some leadership by having below average emissions. And that's not even mentioning that the fact that of course current worldwide emissions per capita are far too high, so we really need to cut even more.

Meanwhile, China's emission per capita are roughly half that of the US.

Even considering the the meager progress made by the US in the past decades to reduce emissions, we are still the 4th most emitting nation per capita.

This is the whole pitch of the green movement. Reduce emissions at whatever cost, they completely miss the point that we (the humans on this planet) dont know how to do this. Its not about what we should do its about figuring out how and until we know how there is not much point in making peoples life harder and make them feel bad for doing what they have to do. Or make placebo progress like biofuel and other nonsense.

The earth overshoot day in 2021 is on July 29. Its not hard to figure out that we are nowhere near sustainable and all the proposed cuts and implemented policies did so far is insignificantly reduce the GROWTH of global emissions.

We need real solutions, technological progress of the magnitude of the last 100 years or something like that to make any relevant difference. Not telling people how bad they are for the environment and how they can feel better by doing mostly useless stuff like carefully separating trash for the recycling-fraud industry.

It doesn't take ground breaking technology for Americans to stop driving Hummers on their office commute. Nor would it take a tech breakthrough for the US government to stop giving fossil fuel companies $20b/year in tax credits and subsidies. Nor any new tech for sunny regions to cover building roofs with solar panels. If we can spend $2 trillion plus in middle eastern wars of dubious value, surely we buy a some solar panels and batteries.

No new tech is needed. A modicum of will is all that is required.

So what? Emissions are global and rising especially in the places where most people live (Asia). If emission of the whole USA would be zero from today on, global emission would keep growing. At the current rate it would only take a few years for the rest of the world additional emission to replace the whole USA. Needless to to say that zero emission is only a thought experiment. But if this better-than-best-case-scenario can only buy us 10 years or so maybe we should not focus on this?

If the average human causes half the emission of the US people then that is still more than the planet can sustain so why do we focus on the small portion of people who use the most? We should focus on finding a solutions that cuts emission for all. Its not hard to figure out that cutting emissions from all people in halve would have far more benefit than bring the US peoples emission down to the world average or even lower. It intuitively makes sense to reduce emission where it seems the highest but if you look a the whole picture it will not have the desired effect.

>It doesn't take ground breaking technology for Americans to stop driving Hummers on their office commute.

This is exactly what I meant in my original post. The whole green movement is about cutting emission at all cost. Regardless of the fact that removing hummers from Americans or even all cars that use above average fuel would do absolutely nothing on a global scale. Especially not if they have to be replaced by newly build cars.

The whole ideas that us middle-class and rich people who could afford to reduce their emissions should be the once who take the cut is completely absurd. Yes they probably could but would probably crash the global economy if they did and beside that it would not matter at all. The global emissions are not cased by luxury products and people with high emission hobbies like driving a sport car.

> Nor any new tech for sunny regions to cover building roofs with solar panels.....surely we buy a some solar panels and batteries.

It would takes 20-30 years and it would cause and insane amount of emissions to produce solar panels and batteries in these quantities that it would reduce significant emissions. In the same time the rest of the worlds additional emissions would at least double what the USA would reduce. especially if most of the electronics that the USA would need is produces somewhere else and the processing steps that case the most emissions would likely be done outside of the USA.

The reality is we dont know how to reduce global emissions in a significant way (unless you include "solutions" that would directly or indirectly cause the death of millions of people or otherwise would be ethically not okay). We waste time by doing green placebo-solutions rather than putting all the resources we still have into finding real solutions.

Isn't that part of the point? If the US has maintained per capita emission levels that would be ruinous if the rest of the world joined us at, can you really say "we" are done with anything?

OP listed a bunch of specific things, moderate efficiencies and switching to natural gas are great but not nearly sufficient.

I don't see your point refereeing the past emissions of the US as some kind of moral victory against the west, but regardless of what the west does, the math does not work without those countries taking action. We can cut emissions to 0 and that'll likely buy a decade or so with the current growth rate of China. So you're focusing your energy in the wrong place

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emis...

In fact, the EU is in the process of doing this right now, and China is definitely reacting to it (not happy, but it seems like the Chinese government is looking toward expanding their existing policies to cover more industries in an attempt to avoid the EU border adjustment).

Another way to look at it is that given how much the USA has already contributed to the accumulation of greenhouse gases, China would need to continue at their current levels for another 30 or so years before they catch up with us -- and that's with about 4x the population.

I understand that that argument may not be persuasive to some, though, because a lot of the manufacturing and technological development that took place in the USA over that time benefited many countries. And a lot of those emissions took place prior to the wide knowledge of how serious climate change is.

So I'd really say that we should aim for net zero emissions because it's the right thing to do. Everyone has to do it, and it's not going to happen if we all stand around waiting for someone else to go first. There is a pretty massive amount of emissions cutting we could do without much effort at all, and if the rest is spread out over a number of years, the cost will be very small, and will have a lot of benefits to people's health. (Climate change is not the only negative externality of burning fossil fuels by a long shot.)

The place to start is a carbon tax. I highly recommend that everyone who cares about climate change call congress (https://citizensclimatelobby.org/call-your-representative-ab...) and ask them to support a carbon tax.

We need to articulate the future, not wax poetically toward some vague economic abstractions. Unless we can articulate some hopeful answer to this question, nothing consequential will change. People really do not want to live as subsistence farmers.

For one, net zero houses look pretty comfortable:

* https://www.chba.ca/CHBA/BuyingNew/Net-Zero-Homes.aspx

If you go further toward "passive house" you can have 5000 sq. ft. (500 sq. m.) of living area and only need 1500W (a hairdryer) to heat it:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vul4vMFdkA

Residential energy use accounts for roughly 20% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States:

* https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19122

IMHO there's still plenty of low-hanging fruit in just efficiencies that can be plucked before lifestyle sacrifices would need to be made.

The number of Passivhauser in the US is apparently in the thousands. What would it take to scale this up to 100-1000 times? What would it take to change the status from luxury good to mass adoption?

https://www.pembina.org/blog/passive-house-revolution

If it was all upside, the established players, in this case home builders, would have already incorporated it to gain a competitive advantage.

I am guessing there are downsides such as cost of materials, expertise, mold, or something that keeps this from being an economical solution.

Aiming for something that can be net zero is probably more practical: building stringently up to a certain point, and then throw some PV panels to offset whatever expected energy use is remaining.

Per capita emissions for the US: 15.52 tons

Per capita emissions for India: 1.91

US has about eight times the per capita emission of India, double that of China(which makes a lot of things for the US) and somehow India and China are to blame and the US deserves no blame, even given all its riches and having the means to reduce emissions?

And you think that’s OK?

I'm personally completely in favor of import tariffs on goods manufactured abroad with dirty energy and immigration quotas on nationals from countries that have decided not to control their emissions.