| ▲ | kleiba2 3 days ago |
| I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables. Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries as having the highest CO2-equivalent emissions (in Mt): | China | 5,565 |
| United States | 1,737 |
| India | 1,395 |
| Russia | 536 |
| Japan | 492 |
In comparison, the whole of the European Union (consisting of 27 individual countries, including Germany) is emitting 587 Mt.All these numbers should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account. But even then, the whole of the EU does not fare too bad. [0] https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electric... |
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| ▲ | throw310822 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > should probably be put into perspective, though, by taking the population size into account Obviously, each individual should have a right to emit a certain amount of GHGs independently from the size of the country he happens to be born in. So the correct list is this (2024 data [1]). Quite surprising in places (e.g. the position of the UK, Australians emitting GHGs at the level of a petro-state, and Canadians too, well above the US). | Country | MtCO2e/ capita
| Qatar | 54.54
| Kuwait | 38.14
| Bahrain | 35.13
| United Arab Emirates | 25.62
| Oman | 24.02
| Saudi Arabia | 22.79
| Australia | 22.26
| Canada | 19.76
| Russia | 18.02
| United States | 17.34
| New Zealand | 15.59
| South Korea | 12.83
| Ireland | 11.86
| China | 10.81
| Poland | 9.28
| Belgium | 9.15
| Netherlands | 8.35
| Germany | 8.17
| Italy | 6.32
| Spain | 6.16
| Brazil | 5.93
| France | 5.68
| United Kingdom | 5.63
1 - from here: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025?vis=ghgpop#emissi... |
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| ▲ | card_zero 2 days ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I've left the petro-states in the list because the fact that they have such high per-capita emissions is interesting even if not surprising, but I agree that as small countries they don't really contribute that much to global emissions. I find more interesting the position of Australia, Canada and the US close to the top, and the surprisingly low position of the UK. As for China, an average Chinese citizen is already contributing 40% less than his average US counterpart to global emissions- do you think we should ask them to make a bigger effort because China has more people? In that case, do you think that simply splitting China in two political entities each with half the population would solve the problem of their emissions? | | |
| ▲ | card_zero 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I know the UK has a lot of wind and solar, and then there's short transport distances: those other countries are famous for hauling goods over long distances through sparsely populated terrain, which the UK doesn't have any of. I wonder which country is considered to own the emissions from a cargo ship? But anyway, about China, we agree on one thing: there are a lot of Chinese who are pretty much not participating in emissions. Then there are cities, factories, power stations for factories, and the government which, and this is the important point, has control over those sources of emissions. If you split it into two nations, what that does is to remove the single point of control, and as a result remove the opportunity to do something about a huge portion of global emissions. Politically speaking splitting China in two sounds like an improvement, and lots of fun, but if you want some entity to control a really large amount of emissions, it's surely a giant authoritarian state that has the power to do it. If the two halves were different in industrialization - if one had all the peasants and the other had all the factories and factory workers - that would help, since then you have a country that tops both lists, and can be firmly blamed by everyone, and we can stop getting lost in the weeds of "per capita" and the mad idea that individual scum like me and you have any responsibility to solve climate change by reusing plastic bags and so on. |
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| ▲ | hamper653 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | throwayay4929 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Germany is in Europe and the economist is about Europe, so it makes sense to look at high emitters in Europe, no? Also, while it's important to look at the global picture, let's not ignore the local effects: air quality in Germany is pretty bad, perhaps the worst in Europe. Poland is pretty bad too, especially in the winter. That's not China's or USA's fault. |
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| ▲ | BurningFrog 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Germany is singled out because decided to close their safe and well functioning zero emission power plants for no good reason, thus exploding their CO2 emissions. Yeah, other emit more, but the rank stupidity of this environmental vandalism deserves the scorn it gets! |
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| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > thus exploding their CO2 emissions Except their emissions have continued to go down. Whether you count just electricity or economy wide. And even before this "explosion" they were about half the US on per capita economy wide and now are less than half. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t... I believe they are singled out in a feeble attempt by climate change deniers and fossil fuel boosters to discredit renewables. Which Germany played a pivotal role in kick-starting and which are currently saving the world. |
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| ▲ | boringg 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The reason Germany gets singled out is because it was a massive policy misstep and highlights the shortsightedness of the environmental movement. It seems that they have changed their tune about it nuclear - but their entrenched efforts (and concerns in the 80s) killed the last 40 years of nuclear power - arguably inflaming our current CO2 crises by opening the doors wide open for Oil and Gas to fill the void. In Germany add in that they then needed to rely on Russia to provide natural gas to fill in the void - which drove up the costs of power and made their manufacturing base a little less competitive.... Best intentions don't always prove to be good policy making. That's the TL;DR why Germany gets singled out. |
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