The Dutch have 0 nuclear. That still leaves a factor of 2. With respect not to an ideal but with respect to a country that itself is emitting too much to be sustainable.

Nuclear is part of the solution, I fully agree. But it will not solve the problem alone. Technology will not solve this problem alone.

As said, the reasons behind the American emission levels are not some unknowable mystery. The emissions attributions are quite detailed now. Americans have more cars per inhabitant, and they are heavier and less optimised. American houses are bigger and consume more energy. Americans have a diet that is more emission heavy. It may be hard to hear, but that’s currently unsustainable, and by a wide margin.

You are right in saying that there are other countries that are worse. That does not liberate you from the obligation to strive towards sustainability.

Sustainability does not mean reduce to zero, just reduce enough to give those after us a livable world. Don’t complain or hide behind the others, but lead by example. That’s what a superpower does.

You are hand waving and just making up assertions without actually providing any data.

“ It must be the big cars” “it’s the American diet”

Please explain Canada and Australia being more than the United States

You also aren’t accounting for any industry either.

Once again, the use of coal is demonstrably significant. No hand waving necessary:

“New EPA directive will cut pollution equivalent to the emissions of 328m cars”

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/25/new-rule...

I typed into Google "co2 emissions per household europe vs us" and the 1st and 3rd results were these pages.

https://palanan.com/blogs/news/why-does-the-u-s-have-twice-a...

https://www.zerofy.net/2022/04/04/household-co2-emissions.ht...

I would like to think that this settles it for you. But something tells me you prefer to continue to repeat to yourself that "I don't have to do anything, it's because other people won't switch from coal to nuclear".

Whenever someone posts from a site that I’ve never heard of before, I tend to believe they’re wrong.

Have the large American homes and cars been responsible for the large drop in per capita emissions over the past 20 years?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon...

Want to do a correlation between car size and home size with this large drop in emissions?

Since Americans have purchased larger cars and homes, we have a negative correlation!

You could of course try to find some information yourself. But I spent 30 seconds and found pages on the NYT and the Economist. Will that do?

https://web.archive.org/web/20240429104301/https://www.econo...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/automobiles/european-us-c...

You are right in saying that emissions have been reducing, even in the US. That's because a lot of people are actively working the problem.

The issue is not that they're not reducing. The issue is that they're not reducing fast enough. Mostly because gains on one hand are offset by increases in production (the Jevons paradox). Again, the US is emitting (per capita) twice that of European countries. And the europeans still have a lot of work ahead of them to become sustainable.

As the saying goes, statistics are like bikinis. What they show is nice, but what they hide is even more important.

Your statistic shows "Per capita carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from fossil fuels in the United States"

That means that your statistics account only for CO2 that is physically produced in the US. Since the US, like most other western countries, has moved it's industry to the 2nd and 3rd world, those are missing from your image.

If you look at "consumed CO2" : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...

...you'll notice that the emissions are reducing veeeery slowly. This also explains why "CO2 from fossil fuels in US" has been reduced : those emissions have been progressively moved to China, who have been doing your industrial production since the 90s.

It also means the statistic only shows CO2 that is emitted from fossil fuels, and not any other processes.

Also, it only shows CO2, and not other Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. For example, methane accounts for 16% of GHG emissions. It is 28x more potent as a GHG than CO2. It is emitted for example by the beef industry, and waste management. I have a page for you : https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane

Guess what? US emissions of methane are up : https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_met...

But something tells me that more data is not going to change your opinion. Because changing your opinion would mean that you would have to accept that your current behavior has to change.

I wish you the best of luck explaining yourself to your kids in 15-30 years.

Everyone knows Americans drive bigger cars. No one is disputing that.

Methane has nothing to do with cars.

Tell your kids you ignored nuclear energy for decades and used all that coal.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2024/04/17/forget...

OK. So now we have established that americans have bigger and less efficient cars. How do you think that that effects your GHG emissions? If you want more data, the Congressional Budget Office has a great page that shows that fuel economy is sliiiightly improving every year (i.e. if only cars hadn't grown so much eh?) and miles travelled is waaaaay up. So any technological improvements made has been undone by just consuming more. Did I mention Jevons paradox? https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58861

Regarding methane. A major source of methane is the agriculture sector. Look it up in the diagram I sent, it's the second biggest source. Specifically, 1kg of beef emits 4x the amount of GHG that 1 kg chicken emits, which in turns emits many times more than 1kg of plants. Remember that part about diet?

Also, methane is a side product of oil production (it escapes when you drill). That's why in the diagram it is the first source of GHG. Still think that methane has nothing to do with cars?

I live in France currently; 70% of our energy is nuclear. In the Netherlands the decades-long natural gas infrastructure is being phased out for solar PV and geothermal at a phenomenal rate. In 8 years they went from 1% to 18% of national usage. 4 GW of capacity was installed only last year.

If ever you were in need of data : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_Netherlands

That's not some accident of history. The Dutch made a political decision to invest, like a responsible, first-world geopolitical actor. The US could do the same. If they wanted to.

Let me guess. You're going to say (again) that "all of that is un-inmportant, we just need to go to nuclear". Even though I've already shown that the difference between France (70% nuclear) and the Netherlands (0% nuclear) is x2 instead of x3. That's because electric power is only 25% of GHG emissions. 28% is transport, 23% is industry, 10% is agriculture. Data (from statista no less) : https://www.statista.com/statistics/1200954/ghg-emissions-br...

Read some of the pages I've sent. It's important.

“How do you think that that affects your GHG emissions? ”

Do the math and let me know.

But hurry because we are transitioning to electric vehicles!

France is a small country with 70 million people. It’s less industrial. Small GDP. US is 10x GDP.

The US has as much nuclear power as France but it only amounts to 20%