Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2021–2024
10:36 · 12M views · Jun 21, 2020
Kurzgesagt examines who is responsible for climate change, comparing historical, current and per-capita emissions by country. It argues that individual footprints are a distraction from larger responsibility.
Recommended as a nuanced, data-backed treatment of emissions responsibility, made with Our World in Data.
4 comments from Hacker News
No. It's a canard, a wild goose chase, a red herring... Thanks to Kurzgesagt. They did a great video essay at : "Who Is Responsible For Climate Change? – Who Needs To Fix It?" this video Also Goodheart's law: [LINK]
Kurzgesagt has a good video called "Who Is Responsible For Climate Change? – Who Needs To Fix It?": * this video There are multiple view points. The country with the largest current annual total emissions is China with 27-30% and the US with 15% (see 2m10s). The country that produced the most CO2 in total historically which got us to this point of climate change (see 3m30s), were US first at 25% of historical emissions, and the EU in second at 22%, and China in third with 13% of historical emissions. India, all of Africa, and all of South America each had 3% of historical emissions. Then there's per capita emissions (see 5m10s of the video). So which of these three metrics should be used? Or should it be some other metric or a combination? Also probably worth noting that China seems to have peaked in coal plants. They've built too many already, but hopefully it should be going down now.
Or perhaps the argument is more complicated than the OP suggests. Perhaps you and they should watch the Kurzgesagt video made in conjunction with Our World in Data (linked on OP's linked page): this video
> Are you blaming Americans for China's environmental destruction because we buy their products? Americans have created systems that protect the environment that China could take advantage of Some of the systems may make products expensive, and the whole point of offshoring production to China (from the US and other places), so to make them in expensively. Are consumers willing to start paying the externalities of climate change in their products (regardless of where they are produced)? And as Kurzgesagt points out in "Who Is Responsible For Climate Change? – Who Needs To Fix It?", while China as a whole releases the most, per capita each citizen is relatively low(er) emissions (especially compared to the US). Further, the country with highest cumulatively/historically released carbon to date—which has led us to the climate change problem in the first place—is the US: * this video