Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to We use diplomatic and political pressure.

Better.

I don't recommend economic war with China, but that was a real response.

Here's an article on China and emissions. This is an interview with a government guy, so keep the salt handy.

A couple of things that stood out:

"If China could replace coal with oil as a primary source of energy, emissions would drop by one third. If we could replace coal with natural gas, they would drop by two thirds."


That's a lot of natural gas, though.

There is work being done on oceanic methane hydrates, but it's tricky.

At their peak, France’s per-capita emissions were 9 tonnes, while Germany’s approached 15 tonnes. We shouldn’t forget that. You can’t ask China to get to 7 tonnes and level off or fall. It goes against the basic laws of developmental economics. Japan and Australia have per-capita GDPs of US$40,000, but their emissions still haven’t peaked. China’s per-capita GDP is US$5-6,000. The curve is still going up.

China can peak at a lower level than the US and EU did historically. But even a per-capita peak of 10 tonnes means total emissions of 13 billion tonnes.

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