Both Europe and US's emissions are significantly (18%-30%) below their peak (which was 20 years ago. The rest of the world is also moving towards renewables.

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graeme 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Global co2 emissions are at an all time high.

Co2 parts per million are a stock, like the level of water in a bathtub. Annual emissions are a flow, like how strongly the water is flowing in.

The tub is fuller than ever before AND filling at the fastest rate ever.

The problem is that carbon energy is useful. So unless something globally beats almost all use cases then somewhere marginally it will be worth burning vs not burning it.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

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gpt5 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a leaking bathtub. Half life of excess CO2 in the atmosphere is 30-100 years. So you need the water flowing in to continue to increase in rate (not just to continue flowing in), otherwise you reach a new equilibrium and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere stop increasing.

They do increase in rate as you said (for now).

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graeme 5 hours ago | parent [-]

That's a rather misleading statistic. Some is absorbed by oceans, where it acidifies. For land based carbon sinks (trees, soil, etc) any new carbon being deposited is competing with existing carbon in the carbon cycle.

If your stat had any sense then atmospheric carbon levels would rapidly plunge in a few centuries without humans burning carbon. They plainly don't do that.

	▲	gpt5 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Carbon levels are expected to plunge over a few centuries if carbon emissions drop. You are right the the ocean is the largest carbon sink, and it has the negative side effect of acidifying.

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darth_avocado 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While yes the emissions are down from 2007 and majority of it has been driven by the shift away from coal in power generation.

However, every other sector has been rather flat in terms of emissions since the 90s. When you account for the fact that a large amount of industries have moved to China and other developing countries, the fact that emissions from industries have been flat, means that the overall consumption has gone up.

If you account for the emissions that we’ve offshored, we’d not be looking so good.

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AlecSchueler 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Both Europe and US's emissions are significantly (18%-30%) below their peak

Because they outsource their dirty work. To get a true picture of US/EU emissions you need to factor in the factories in Asia that are producing their consumer goods, as well as the global transport network that supports this.

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hn_throwaway_99 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How much of that is just outsourcing much of our industry to Asia/etc.?

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enraged_camel 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, this is the right question to ask. A lot of the decrease in emissions in Western nations is the equivalent of dumping your trash in a lot across town. Sure it's "gone", but only in a technical sense.

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tonyedgecombe 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not as much as people would have you believe.

	▲	karmakurtisaani 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What a terrible answer.

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gpt5 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Asia is also moving towards renewables.