100% of Your RDA of Ken

NPR had a piece this morning about the G-8’s meeting about cutting emissions. The point of the piece was that the developing nations don’t think that the first-world nations are being aggressive enough in curbing their greenhouse gases. The money quote came from the Chinese representative, who opined that the USA should be held more accountable because we produce more pollution per person than China.

But there’s a real bit of doubletalk going on here. The Chinese representative said “the average American produces four times the carbon footprint as the average Chinese citizen.” But even if that’s true (and experts are yet in disagreement about that number), the Chinese population is MORE THAN FOUR TIMES AS LARGE as the population of the United States (July 2007 estimated populations):

USA: 301,139,947
China: 1,321,851,888 [= 4.39 x USA]

Per capita, Americans may have a bigger carbon footprint. But in reality China as a nation is polluting the earth more than the USA is, and hiding that fact in their larger numbers. According to the New York Times, “Experts once thought China might overtake the United States as the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2010, possibly later. Now, the International Energy Agency has said China could become the emissions leader by the end of this year, and the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said China had already passed that level.”

China is counted among the “developing nations”, and their pollution-cutting goals are not as stringent as those being imposed on the first-world nations. By demonizing the USA, China is diverting attention from the fact that they are actually polluting the earth more than any other nation, but they won’t be held accountable in the same regards as America will.

That’s bullshit.