We just got rid of the carbon rebate (clowns that we are). We’d better fucking make the cost of industry polluting very high.
But the tax is axed, right?
Short sighted fucking idiots.
Thanks to everyone forcing return to office! Great job guys!
I need a truck for my job. I had a 2011 Ford Ranger for YEARS. When that kicked the bucket in 2022, I was forced to by an F-150 and it’s an absolute monstrosity. It is massive and has LESS box space than my Ranger did. I don’t why it’s near impossible to buy a small truck with a full sized box in North America.
Something else at play here is accuracy in reporting. Canada has strict reporting regulations, which means the pollution reported matches the actual pollution pretty well (but this ignores that Canada releases a LOT of CO2 into the atmosphere through natural processes as well — forest fires and permafrost methane off gassing for example).
Also, worth noting that where I live in Canada, there’s lots of public transit, minimal food waste, single use plastics aren’t legal to sell, and neither are single use plastic shopping/grocery bags. A lot of people drive electric vehicles, and electricity is generated by hydroelectricity.
Most of the pollution (and there IS a lot) is industrial, a lot of it related to tar sands oil extraction.
We have been for a long time, this is not new.
I would say that we continue to do nothing despite the dire forthcoming consequences, and that should be reported on ad nauseum.
Maybe Danielle Smith could fly around the US a few more times.
As I suspected, Australia celebrates overshoot day before Canada (in other words manages to be a worse polluter).
Interestingly, Uruguay, followed by Indonesia are best.
https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/
This data is expressed as a date. From the site:
Every year, a Country Overshoot Day marks the date when the planet’s annual biocapacity budget would be used up if everyone on Earth lived at the same level of consumption as the residents of that particular country.
Not all countries represented. Would like to see every country on there.
That’s because not every country produces the data. We don’t (yet) have a “global” order that requires a minimum standard of compliance and at the rate that the Orange is destroying everything he touches, I doubt we’ll see it in our lifetimes.
OK. I though it was a calculation based off of reported and estimated CO2 emmisions.
Soon to be corrected. As the USA’s population seeks asylum, the per capita pollution will naturally be less. Two problems solved.
Good old statistics! Always solving the big problems by showing the data in a different way.
Solving problems the Excel way.
“The solution to pollution is dilution”
Probably similar issues to Australia. Large country, small population.
Yeah, but in both cases a majority of the population lives in the moderately dense line between the two major cities in the south east.
Without knowing too much about Canada, probably also not enough investment into rail transport?
Worse, they have been taking after the US and only allowing single family homes and car based infrastructure. They also elect idiots like Doug Ford.
Doug: “I feel so safe on this bike in the city of Toronto”. Also Doug: “my commute is extended a few minutes, fuck the people that actually live in the city, I’ll remove the bike lanes with fake data and by riling up other lazy fucks like myself so I can drive my car from the suburbs into the city quicker”
There is a whole channel “not just bikes” about non car based transportation and public spaces that commonly cites Canada as basically US 2.0 (from a guy that used to live in Canada before, and still has family there).
The only top hdi country without HSR.
That’s why USA gets so much metal from canada, so you guys can pollute and usa looks greener.
You can see the so2 levels on windy and no2 for that matter all over the mines up there.
I don’t think the US cares that much about looking (or being) greener
well they did, but now definitely not.
You’ve got to be kidding! No way Canada makes as much air pollution or solid waste as China, India, Africa, etc. We CAN do better but, the headline is BS.
Per capita means it’s adjusted for the population. Both China and India are large polluters but they are the two most populated countries in the world.
Yes, we are small compared to them. But we are doing very well! This article is full of numbers without sources, making it an opinion piece.
Here’s something I can agree with:: (translated by google)
“ It is not only the limits of our planet that are exceeded, so is our economic model”, and
“… the only way to curb the looting and deadly destruction of our resources by the most greedy among us is to impose severe and ambitious regulatory constraints on them”
Here is some data supporting that Canada is second in per-capita CO2 emissions after the US.
When looking at consumption-based emissions the picture is not quite as dire but it’s still not great.
I don’t think you’re getting it.
If Canada has 10 people and 6 of them are heroin addicts, and China has 1000 people and 60 of them are heroin addicts, then even though China has 10 times as many addicts they’re doing a better job curbing addiction since only 6% rather than 60% of people are addicted.
I understand percentages. But in your example of addicts, it’s the number of people that counts in my book, not whether or percentage is lower. I also understand that more people, pollute more, absolutely. So to think that our small population needs to make a significant effort to reduce pollution , which is absolute, is a guilt reaction.
The only logical way to compare countries’ climate progress is per capita…
Not saying this is false, but do you have a more recent source? This article is from last year.
It takes a lot of time (and effort) to collect and compile global scale datasets like this.
A year old is not good enough? Not much changed between then and now.
I think their request is fair, we come to Lemmy for news rather than old information, though a reminder of how much we pollute without necessarily collecting extremely fresh data is also good.
That’s a misleading statement designed to deflect attention from worse countries.
We have very low population density compared to other countries. So our pollution per km is extremely low. While countries like India and china are much much higher
Per capita is a much better metric than per km
Kind of. But by that argument, we could improve things by increasing the birth rate.
Huh?
The solution to “too much pollution per person” is to have more people polluting"???
Are you serious?
I think you (and others) have misunderstood what I was saying — the metric can be gamed by having more people. Most of Canada’s pollution is industrial and won’t shift all that much by adding more people. The solution is to just call out all the polluting factors and reduce them, no matter which metric is being used to measure.
The problem isn’t the pollution to person ratio, it’s the pollution. The solution is for the entire country to pollute less.
No. Being a better measurement does not indicate to it being a perfect one.
Er, per capita means that increasing the population de facto decreases the ratio, unless the pollution increases as well. What are you saying “no” to and why are you introducing “being perfect?” That’s two moved goalposts in one statement.
The goal is to reduce environmental pollutants. The way to do this is to measure the delta in pollution. Population doesn’t matter any more than landmass (and potentially slightly less).
I’m not introducing any goal posts. These are things assumable with common sense. “If a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a metric” applies in such case. For progress, the only thing that matters is the total amount going down—neither per km area nor per capita have any value in measuring meaningful progress. But they could provide a good snapshot of present impact of each country.
Per capita is a better snapshot because it measures impact of a citizen in the country. Per landmass isn’t great because it ignores countries with outsized impacts.
Why do you feel pollution per km is an appropriate metric?
You can see the pollution from India and china from space. Or you could before Covid when it was making the news.
You can’t see any of Canada’s. From a distance you can see smog of the GTA and Vancouver’s lower mainland
I don’t think most people are trying to reduce emissions to improve the view of their region from space.
Most people are focusing on, you know, the carbon emissions which are heating the planet, and the downstream effects from the changes that incurs?
Emission levels per capita is absolutely a better metric than “the view from space”. It’s perhaps a bit misleading— should the emissions from China that go to making disposable shit for europe and North America be attributed to their production or our consumption? (Obviously China should own the fraction for their own domestic consumption regardless)
But yeah, the emissions per capita is a good metric even if my country doesn’t look good in it. Because even if you’re fooling yourself with this view from space nonsense you’re not fooling anyone else
We’re talking about global emissions here. Canada makes up a large portion of the globe. Per square km makes perfect sense.
The world doesn’t really care how many humans there are, but there’s a fixed amount of landmass*
*discounting sea level rise
That said, the important bit is overall impact. If Canada pumps CO2 into the atmosphere, burns the boreal forest, and releases the methane deposits in the permafrost and oceans, that’s a massive problem globally, and involves morethan just the petrochemicals we burn.
It matters when it’s the people and their activities causing the emissions. A bunch of unused land doesn’t make the pollution that the people actually do where they live any less bad.
This is a truly bad take, it comes across as the most desperate attempt to minimize a problem that instead we deserve to look at head on
Saying that pollution delta is important is a bad take?
Canada needs to fix its pollution problems by curbing the pollution. ALL of it. Focusing on per capita minimizes part of that just as much as focusing on landmass.
Especially since massive amounts of Canada’s pollution happens out of sight of the majority of the population.
I’m going to honest and say that I really don’t understand what you’re getting at. Either you misunderstood what I’m saying, or i misunderstood you and still don’t understand; or both.
A proper accounting of the emissions generated in Canada is what’s important. Averaging our emissions down because of all our vast expanses of empty land is disingenuous at best and false propaganda at worst.
For industrial uses an ideal accounting would be look at who consumes the byproducts of those products. If we ship oil to the US we could allocate those emissions to the US and if China or India has emissions to serve our demand then we could be allocated this to us.
A consumption-based accounting in combination with the current per-capita accounting would give a decently accurate representation of where and why the emissions are occurring. Per-sq-km emissions have zero place in any reasonable discussion.
