• rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    Europe (alongside the USA and other countries of the “western world”) has been releasing disgusting amounts of climate change-inducing gases since the 18th century, and they (alongside the USA) were the main profiteers of climate pollution until the latter half of the 20th century. Arguably still are, though other countries like China and Brazil also play a part now.

    Granted, this treats nations as monoliths, it’s not like the population of most countries really had a choice for the most part.

      • Jakylla@jlai.lu
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        9 hours ago

        The fact that Aviation and Maritime transports are visible, alongside large countries and continents emissions, is absolutely nuts.

      • Chaf@slrpnk.net
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        1 day ago

        Nice of you to side-track with current emissions (per capita even), and not cumulative historical emissions, which were actually mentioned.

        Feel free to compare different countries yourself: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics (I’m not sure why ourworldindata doesn’t just put all of this on one page instead of splitting it up. It’s always a hassle to find the right one it even is on the same page, I just didn’t look close enough) The more interesting comparison might be high-income vs low-income countries.

        To get back to the discussion: Yes, Europes share is not as huge as it used to be, and it’s getting lower, but what can be seen from @Tehdastehdas@piefed.social graph is that that’s less due to Europe behaving better and rather due to other countries polluting more. Not a good argument for saying “Europe is doing better now”

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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        1 day ago

        Right now, yes, but for the vast majority of history it wasn’t even close. Your link shows that China only met the EU’s per capita emissions in 2013, when climate change was already pretty far along. And they are still profiting from their past emissions via the wealth and societal development that they generated back then.

        • rhubarbe@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
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          1 day ago

          That’s fair, but you can’t deny Europe has done much better than its counterparts for more than 2 decades. Europe is not the guilty one there.

          • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            But, consider this: there was a time from before two decades ago. There are rumours that there are even people who are older than 20. Scary, I know.