Comment by devy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devy | Hacker News Reader

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I think it's safe to say human activities is the biggest cause of carbon emission increase in the last few hundred years.

Given that, let's get the facts straight:

- China has 1.382 billion people, India is a close second with 1.327 billion people and United States is a distant 3rd with 324 million people [1]

- Since human activities are the major factor of carbon emission increase. Let's talk a look at the emission by capita data as it's a better metric to proportionally tells the whole picture. According to 2013's data[2], US is ranked at #7 with 16.5 ton per capita. The first 6 countries are mostly middle east oil producers with the exception of Australia. That's more than 2x of China's per capita rate or almost 10x of India's.

So it's hypocritical for someone from developed countries to criticize developing countries because if China and India were emitting CO2 at the rate of United States', the total emission would have been A LOT WORSE! (I'll leave the math for you to calculate how many times worse :-)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

Except India's CO2 emissions are less than a third of China's, despite having more people. End of story really. Per capita is a nonsense argument by someone trying to win on technicalities. Unfortunately, "the earth" doesn't care how many people a particular country has, it makes no difference to the environment.

It might make a difference if they were actually using the C02 to do something worthwhile, instead they're using it to make goods to sell for a profit. It's about profit and has nothing to do with China being an developing/industrial country new to the game.

    Except India's CO2 emissions are less than a third of China's, despite having more people.

That's categorically false! India still has less population than China's despite of getting real close in recent years. It's in my previous post's references. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...

Per capita is a common sense rather because more people further developed hence more industrialization and more CO2 emission.

Along the same lines, smogs and air pollution are also part of the emission that had happened badly for the major industrial hubs in the western world like London[1] and Los Angeles[2] in the early 20th century. Although most developed countries has realized the environmental impact of industrialization and the cost of repairing it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_the_United_St...

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