This is very important to understand, I believe. Both for the reality of where CO2 emissions are coming from, and for helping us understand how our own psychological tendencies influence how we see the problem .
Well, these "two ways of saying the same thing," omit SO MUCH abpit the essential nature of the beast of modernity. Why? because the framing is entirely constrained by linear thinking (as is most of the commentary).
I am reminded of the old saw, "blaming the victim." Is the kid who climbed out of poverty to blame for participating in the system designed to afford him the income to purchase a few fossil-fueled industrial consumer products and services?
Oh, but clearly--if the graph is correct--the "poor countries" are clearly 'emitting more' carbon than the rich ones. So, of course, very large numbers of people consuming at barely above the 'poverty line,' emit more than a much smaller number of affluent people emitting vastly more carbon per capita.
Not only is the kindly--almost forgiving--tone of this essay offensively patronizing, it implies complete ignorance and acceptance (at the same time) of the historical and present condition of the political economy (and military enforcement) of the dominator culture of "industrial civilization." It also attempts to absolve the very system that has produced the global spread of carbon emissions, as the many are handed out a pittance of personal energy consumption-as compared with the profligate energy waste by the well-trained consumers in the rich countries.
Not a hint of the systemic nature of the extremely distorted distribution of energy and materials TO the rich countries, FROM the poor countries--for CENTURIES, right up to the present. It is not that the 'facts' presented are technically inaccurate; it is that they distort by omission.
The characterization of "rising emissions" offered has the implicit implication that either, the poor should stop producing so many consumers, or that growing global emissions are their fault. While the writer feigns a seeming moral neutrality, being kindly in his wording, the onus is nevertheless put upon the poor for having 'caused' rising emissions.
No, in fact the globalized political economy of endless industrial growth--however inequitably distributed--is the 'cause' of globally rising emissions, not the relatively moderate personal emissions of the latest participants in that system.
From the start of the industrial age, materials and energy have moved from what we used to call the "developing' nations (originally colonies) to the 'developed world.' The hierarchy of domination/subordination was, and is, clear, and clearly at the heart of the matter of global exploitation and oppression.
Despite the 'kindly' wording (as if the protagonist were a victim of his own behavior, having the temerity to participate in the global industrial-consumer system) this essay clearly blames the victim-population of poor nations--poor because of their subordination to the industrial-military might of the Western powers over centuries.
While this 'story' may intend merely to suggest that there are too many people in the world, well, fine, there certainly are. And those who were not born into the centers of global power have no less right to imbibe in the plush products of fossil-fueled industry. But neither do the rest of us have any more right to our hyper-consumerism than they do to their nascent consumerism.
In sum, the either/or linear mentality offers no solution to global over-production-consumption and the pollution it causes, driving the Earth System ever more rapidly toward catastrophic chaos and many-species extinction. The linear thinking of the dominator culture of 'industrial civilization' offers no solution. Any real solution must involve two things (and it will be a very bumpy road at best):
1. A New Great Transformation of all societies to create ecological communities, which do not rely on fossil fuels, but instead utilize existing low-tech tools (and invent new ones) to do NECESSARY work to produce what we need for survival, intellectual engagement, and artistic expression. (Hedge funds must go.)
2. Equitable distribution of resources to achieve democratic organization of communities and their relations with one another. Whether the nation-state has a role in this configuration is an open question. But if it is to have a role, it cannot be on the traditional model of hierarchic domination.
Finally, I would not worry much about over-population--not because the world is not overpopulated, but because given the trajectory of Earth System destabilization we are now on, even if we get everything right, we are unlikely to avoid mass starvation, migration, and armed conflicts over scarce sources of survival. That forces us, if we have a scintilla of humanity left, to focus attention on minimizing suffering by sharing globally, not by projecting blame on the historic victims of the system that could not recognize planetary limits to its golden calf of endless economic growth for the sole purpose of capital accumulation for the world's dominators.
Look, I think we've all been there — you see an article that runs counter to your prior beliefs, your gut rebels against it, then you start hunting around the text to see if there's anything there that'll give you permission to dismiss the whole thing and be done with the unpleasant cognitive dissonance. The Statistical Review of World Energy...bingo! No need to refute any particular idea, revise any priors, do any of that. Ah, much better!
Fair comment. I instictively assume anything funded by the ff industry is self-serving disinformation. That said your argument that the power to reduce emissions rests over-whelmingly with developing countries is not water tight. It would be interesting to know what percentage of their emissions go into producing consumer goods for developed nations as it represents a point of significant leverage. Then there is the importation of ffs from deveoped nations eg coal to China from Australia. The essential issue is that virtually no-one in developed nations is willing to limit their consumption and no-one in a developing nation is willing to limit their development. We are in The Last Chance Cafe setting up our deckchairs.
Well, yes and no. As a matter of accounting, the way you figure where emissions are coming from involves multiplying population times the amount of carbon in a unit of GDP times GDP per capita. That ends up meaning that poor people who stay poor don't contribute nearly as much to overall emissions as poor people who become middle class.
But it's a good question, I'll do a post about it!
This is very important to understand, I believe. Both for the reality of where CO2 emissions are coming from, and for helping us understand how our own psychological tendencies influence how we see the problem .
OMG! Where to begin?
Well, these "two ways of saying the same thing," omit SO MUCH abpit the essential nature of the beast of modernity. Why? because the framing is entirely constrained by linear thinking (as is most of the commentary).
I am reminded of the old saw, "blaming the victim." Is the kid who climbed out of poverty to blame for participating in the system designed to afford him the income to purchase a few fossil-fueled industrial consumer products and services?
Oh, but clearly--if the graph is correct--the "poor countries" are clearly 'emitting more' carbon than the rich ones. So, of course, very large numbers of people consuming at barely above the 'poverty line,' emit more than a much smaller number of affluent people emitting vastly more carbon per capita.
Not only is the kindly--almost forgiving--tone of this essay offensively patronizing, it implies complete ignorance and acceptance (at the same time) of the historical and present condition of the political economy (and military enforcement) of the dominator culture of "industrial civilization." It also attempts to absolve the very system that has produced the global spread of carbon emissions, as the many are handed out a pittance of personal energy consumption-as compared with the profligate energy waste by the well-trained consumers in the rich countries.
Not a hint of the systemic nature of the extremely distorted distribution of energy and materials TO the rich countries, FROM the poor countries--for CENTURIES, right up to the present. It is not that the 'facts' presented are technically inaccurate; it is that they distort by omission.
The characterization of "rising emissions" offered has the implicit implication that either, the poor should stop producing so many consumers, or that growing global emissions are their fault. While the writer feigns a seeming moral neutrality, being kindly in his wording, the onus is nevertheless put upon the poor for having 'caused' rising emissions.
No, in fact the globalized political economy of endless industrial growth--however inequitably distributed--is the 'cause' of globally rising emissions, not the relatively moderate personal emissions of the latest participants in that system.
From the start of the industrial age, materials and energy have moved from what we used to call the "developing' nations (originally colonies) to the 'developed world.' The hierarchy of domination/subordination was, and is, clear, and clearly at the heart of the matter of global exploitation and oppression.
Despite the 'kindly' wording (as if the protagonist were a victim of his own behavior, having the temerity to participate in the global industrial-consumer system) this essay clearly blames the victim-population of poor nations--poor because of their subordination to the industrial-military might of the Western powers over centuries.
While this 'story' may intend merely to suggest that there are too many people in the world, well, fine, there certainly are. And those who were not born into the centers of global power have no less right to imbibe in the plush products of fossil-fueled industry. But neither do the rest of us have any more right to our hyper-consumerism than they do to their nascent consumerism.
In sum, the either/or linear mentality offers no solution to global over-production-consumption and the pollution it causes, driving the Earth System ever more rapidly toward catastrophic chaos and many-species extinction. The linear thinking of the dominator culture of 'industrial civilization' offers no solution. Any real solution must involve two things (and it will be a very bumpy road at best):
1. A New Great Transformation of all societies to create ecological communities, which do not rely on fossil fuels, but instead utilize existing low-tech tools (and invent new ones) to do NECESSARY work to produce what we need for survival, intellectual engagement, and artistic expression. (Hedge funds must go.)
2. Equitable distribution of resources to achieve democratic organization of communities and their relations with one another. Whether the nation-state has a role in this configuration is an open question. But if it is to have a role, it cannot be on the traditional model of hierarchic domination.
Finally, I would not worry much about over-population--not because the world is not overpopulated, but because given the trajectory of Earth System destabilization we are now on, even if we get everything right, we are unlikely to avoid mass starvation, migration, and armed conflicts over scarce sources of survival. That forces us, if we have a scintilla of humanity left, to focus attention on minimizing suffering by sharing globally, not by projecting blame on the historic victims of the system that could not recognize planetary limits to its golden calf of endless economic growth for the sole purpose of capital accumulation for the world's dominators.
Well when you go to a fossil fuel funded site ..... you get what they usually deliver. Carefully crafted ff propaganda.
The Statistical Review of World Energy is published by bp that's British Petroleum.
The bullshit never stops!
Look, I think we've all been there — you see an article that runs counter to your prior beliefs, your gut rebels against it, then you start hunting around the text to see if there's anything there that'll give you permission to dismiss the whole thing and be done with the unpleasant cognitive dissonance. The Statistical Review of World Energy...bingo! No need to refute any particular idea, revise any priors, do any of that. Ah, much better!
If it helps, you get the exact same pattern if you look at the EU’s Database for Global Atmospheric Research: https://www.onepercentbrighter.com/p/where-are-we-with-greenhouse-gas
Fair comment. I instictively assume anything funded by the ff industry is self-serving disinformation. That said your argument that the power to reduce emissions rests over-whelmingly with developing countries is not water tight. It would be interesting to know what percentage of their emissions go into producing consumer goods for developed nations as it represents a point of significant leverage. Then there is the importation of ffs from deveoped nations eg coal to China from Australia. The essential issue is that virtually no-one in developed nations is willing to limit their consumption and no-one in a developing nation is willing to limit their development. We are in The Last Chance Cafe setting up our deckchairs.
Isn't increasing human population the main underlying cause of increasing greenhouse gas emission? The increase is occurring mainly in the Third World, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population-growth-rate/country-comparison/ In contrast, the indigenous populations of Europe and Northeast Asia are shrinking, as are their progeny in North America, although there have been recent net increases in Canada, the US, and some European countries due to migration from the Third World and childbearing by immigrants. Aside from their effect on climate, these trends do not bode well for evolution of human intelligence. https://www.ulsterinstitute.org/ebook/THE%20INTELLIGENCE%20OF%20NATIONS%20-%20Richard%20Lynn,%20David%20Becker.pdf
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44217-024-00135-5
Well, yes and no. As a matter of accounting, the way you figure where emissions are coming from involves multiplying population times the amount of carbon in a unit of GDP times GDP per capita. That ends up meaning that poor people who stay poor don't contribute nearly as much to overall emissions as poor people who become middle class.
But it's a good question, I'll do a post about it!