cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/48586784
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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Helps that Europe is warming faster than the global average. Karma, I guess.
Yet those most affected by heatwaves are elderly and chronically ill people who can‘t afford proper cooling technology.
It‘s not hurting those in power, it‘s hurting those already marginalised.
Karma for what?
Europe (alongside the USA and other countries of the "western world") has been releasing disgusting amounts of climate change-inducing gases since the 18th century, and they (alongside the USA) were the main profiteers of climate pollution until the latter half of the 20th century. Arguably still are, though other countries like China and Brazil also play a part now.
Granted, this treats nations as monoliths, it's not like the population of most countries really had a choice for the most part.
The fact that Aviation and Maritime transports are visible, alongside large countries and continents emissions, is absolutely nuts.
In context: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?time=earliest..2024
Per capita Europe is close to world average. Your comment makes no sense.
(I'm a bit harsh)
Nice of you to side-track with current emissions (per capita even), and not cumulative historical emissions, which were actually mentioned.
Feel free to compare different countries yourself: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics (~~I'm not sure why ourworldindata doesn't just put all of this on one page instead of splitting it up. It's always a hassle to find the right one~~ it even is on the same page, I just didn't look close enough) The more interesting comparison might be high-income vs low-income countries.
To get back to the discussion: Yes, Europes share is not as huge as it used to be, and it's getting lower, but what can be seen from @Tehdastehdas@piefed.social graph is that that's less due to Europe behaving better and rather due to other countries polluting more. Not a good argument for saying "Europe is doing better now"
Right now, yes, but for the vast majority of history it wasn't even close. Your link shows that China only met the EU's per capita emissions in 2013, when climate change was already pretty far along. And they are still profiting from their past emissions via the wealth and societal development that they generated back then.
That's fair, but you can't deny Europe has done much better than its counterparts for more than 2 decades. Europe is not the guilty one there.
But, consider this: there was a time from before two decades ago. There are rumours that there are even people who are older than 20. Scary, I know.
So you're blaming mistakes made more than 20 years ago while forgetting those who were made since? Totally objective and fair opinion...
What do you mean by karma? Europe is doing the most to stop global warming.
Source? Not to say they aren't putting in a ton of effort and making great progress. It's just hard for me to see them as the biggest force in stopping global warming when China built an entire Germany of electrical capacity last year and almost all of it was renewables
Their manufacturing leadership has brought solar and wind down so cheap that it's no longer economical to use create non-renewable generators in most cases. They're also doing a fantastic job producing new electric cars and industrial scale batteries
China is still massively polluting but they're showing a kind of leadership on climate change that I wish I saw in America
I'm curious to hear your take on why Europe is doing the most on climate change
China is polluting because they produce the European and American stuff over there. On their own they'd still pollute but much less.
America could have had pioneer advantage but they fucked it because the political system there has been corrupted by money.
For example Israel bans private funding to politicians and political parties, it's a criminal offence, funding is organised nationally from public funds, if US politicians didn't whore themselves out to special interests it might actually start being able to represent the electorate
But since both parties have their snouts in the trough the country will continue to represent those that pay the most money first and foremost
It's documented in every COP report. Our electricity is mostly carbon-free thanks to renewable and nuclear. Our industry is gone to China. Heating with fossil fuel is being replaced with electric installation and heat pumps...
China was polluting a lot more, that's where a lot of room for improvement existed.
I remember I saw a statistics that China is producing twice more emmisions per person and USA four times more.
And I found this is pretty website with a lot of comparison Our World in Data - CO2 Emissions. Europe was producing almost exclusively til 1900 but since then USA dominated until China took over in 2000. According to the page, EU was responsible for 6.3% of all emissions in 2024, and Europe in total for 12.7%. Pretty much equal to USA emmisions. And while it is much more then South America, Africa and Oceania, it is still a fraction of Asia emmisions.