When I was a kid — one of four — my brother Jimmy got blamed for things. He did break and take things (cookies, toys, etc.) more than the other three of us together, but we likely (certainly) let some blame slide off us and onto him — both consciously and unconsciously.
A similar thing is happening with climate change. When I talk about greenhouse gas emissions (ghg), people point to China as the biggest emitter. This is true — now, and for a few years running — but the past matters, and total U.S emissions since 1850 are more than twice that of China. Still, comparing ghg emissions by country is just another way to blame Jimmy. Per capita emissions give a much better measure of what role we play in climate change, and by one measure, the country with the highest effect per person is actually New Zealand, followed closely by Canada and Australia. We’re number four??
New Zealand is No. 1 because 75% of the forested land there has been cleared of trees, mostly for grazing. The combination of tree loss and livestock production accounts for much of the country’s ghg emissions. The total ghg contribution is magnified because New Zealand’s population is just a little larger than Oregon’s. On a side note, the U.S. has removed almost as much forest as New Zealand. Brazil has only cut one fifth. But the U.S. and Western Europe are adding forest land while Brazil, Indonesia, and other tropical countries are still cutting. We sometimes (usually) focus more on what is happening now than what happened in the past — both for good reason, and for denial purposes.
And this gets us back to the question of, “Who did this to the planet?” We did a lot of it — 25% of all ghg emissions have come from the U.S. over time. And we are just 4% of the Earth’s population. 10% of the population, mostly the U.S. and Western Europe, have added 40% of the total climate-warming gasses to the atmosphere over time.
But change is happening, in both good ways and bad. The U.S. is responsible for 25% of all ghg output over time, but our per capita emissions are down by a third since 1970, from 27 tons to 17 tons per person per year. Per capita emissions in the U.K. are down by almost two thirds, from 17 tons to just 6. Britain stopped burning coal, period. Meanwhile, China has quadrupled its per capita emissions, from 2.5 tons to 11 — still well below our per capita number. Emissions per capita in Greenland and the Maldives islands are 10 times higher than they were 50 years ago, though there just aren’t that many people emitting in those places.
So what can we learn, and who can we blame? It’s complicated. People in the U.S. fly 10 times more miles per capita than people in China. Icelanders fly 10 times more than Americans. Some 95% of the new electricity-generating infrastructure built in the U.S. last year was green, primarily solar and wind, while 95% of the new coal-burning power plants built worldwide last year were in China. But China generates almost one third of its power from renewable sources, and the U.S. has just nudged past one fifth. Nine out of 10 new cars sold in Norway last year were fully electric. The number was 4 in 10 for China, and 1 in 10 for the U.S.
We should be concerned about our past behaviors, even if we did not know what our greenhouse gas emissions would do to the planet until recent decades. We should make up for the damage we did. We should be even more concerned about what we are doing now and who is doing it. If we were lucky (or unlucky) enough to have our ghg emissions affect only our country, the U.S. would be in a world of hurt. My back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if our emissions affected only the U.S., CO2 concentrations over the U.S. would be 4,500 parts per million (ppm, for short). What’s the global ppm? 419.3 in 2023, per NOAA/Google. Yikes! My envelope just caught on fire!! We have been lucky to have the entire atmosphere as our dump.
But that kind of luck will not get us out of this climate situation, and neither will blaming Jimmy, China, or even ourselves (although we deserve 25% of the blame). We have to work together, and continue the progress we have started, faster than we backslide. Sorry, Jimmy.
