>In other words, how much of their pollution is for domestic activity and how much is for making stuff that we in the west consume.

It's about 7.7%. In other words, if we factor in our imports, our co2 emissions would be 7.7% higher than our territorial emissions.

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

Does that include the shipping? Maritime shipping causes about 3% of global greenhouse emissions, IIRC.

No, digging into the data it looks like "International transport" is listed as a separate "country", so it doesn't count toward any single country's emissions.

Too bad, as I know some things have been brought back stateside simply because shipping costs are too high (think: plastic trashcans at Walmart) so I'd suspect the shipping of Chinese goods is a major portion of the total carbon cost.

Seems bewildering. Including transport? So, buying tons of consumerism stuff from China with awful pollution policies plus transport, only impacts for 7.7% of our emissions if we repatriated it here with China’s level of pollution? That’s can’t be right.

That's because you're only one side of the equation (ie. imports). 7.7% is the net effect, so you have to consider the other side (exports) as well. If each american is importing 5 co2e of cheap plastic shit from china, but you're also exporting 5 co2e of high tech shit to china, then the net result is 0.

When you break it down most of the emission you are directly responsible for are

1) Energy production from Coal/Gas (household/office Heating, AC, electricity)

2) Road transport.

[0]

IMO all this discussion about meat consumption and trinkets from China distracts from the big picture. Which is:

- We need to find a way to get rid of Coal/Gas energy production (i.e. solve the whole issue of Renewables intermitency).

- We need to solve the problem of road transport without ICEs.

The main barrier for those two is policy and funding. It has bugger all to do with consumer behaviour. Which is not to say that we shouldn't all curb individual GHG emissions.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...

Futhermore, the pollution regs here are 100x what they are elsewhere (e.g., China). The myth is jobs get offshored for labour costs. That helps, but it's the loose environmental regs that make manufacturing so attractive.