Three Americans Create Enough Carbon Emissions To Kill One Person, Study Finds (theguardian.com) 216
The lifestyles of around three average Americans will create enough planet-heating emissions to kill one person, and the emissions from a single coal-fired power plant are likely to result in more than 900 deaths, according to the first analysis to calculate the mortal cost of carbon emissions. From a report: The new research builds upon what is known as the "social cost of carbon," a monetary figure placed upon the damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide emissions, by assigning an expected death toll from the emissions that cause the climate crisis. The analysis draws upon several public health studies to conclude that for every 4,434 metric tons of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere beyond the 2020 rate of emissions, one person globally will die prematurely from the increased temperature. This additional CO2 is equivalent to the current lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans.
Adding a further 4m metric tons above last year's level, produced by the average US coal plant, will cost 904 lives worldwide by the end of the century, the research found. On a grander scale, eliminating planet-heating emissions by 2050 would save an expected 74 million lives around the world this century. The figures for expected deaths from the release of emissions aren't definitive and may well be "a vast underestimate" as they only account for heat-related mortality rather than deaths from flooding, storms, crop failures and other impacts that flow from the climate crisis, according to Daniel Bressler of Columbia University's Earth Institute, who wrote the paper.
Adding a further 4m metric tons above last year's level, produced by the average US coal plant, will cost 904 lives worldwide by the end of the century, the research found. On a grander scale, eliminating planet-heating emissions by 2050 would save an expected 74 million lives around the world this century. The figures for expected deaths from the release of emissions aren't definitive and may well be "a vast underestimate" as they only account for heat-related mortality rather than deaths from flooding, storms, crop failures and other impacts that flow from the climate crisis, according to Daniel Bressler of Columbia University's Earth Institute, who wrote the paper.
That's nothing (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Emissions are global in effect. Those .3 killed are not necessarily Americans*. So it's all good.
*Central Americans would be OK.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: That's nothing (Score:2)
I took the point to be that Americans are innovative and can manufacture things. They could generate less CO2 per person and at the same time cut their heating/cooling bills.
Stupid math (Score:5, Insightful)
So, they estimate how much carbon Americans put out over their life time, then look at what percentage of people will die because of global warming, then figure out how much carbon will create that global warming. Then do the math, dividing by number of Americans.
Problem is any of the following will increase the amount of people killed:
1) Higher world wide population
2) Higher carbon
3) Lower number of Americans.
Basically, this study says more about over-population and the relatively small percent of people being America than about how much carbon Americans produce.
Re:Stupid math (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
So you're saying someone sent him a copy of this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ?
Re: (Score:2)
How will a lower number of Americans kill more people?
Re: (Score:2)
How will a lower number of Americans kill more people?
Because the number of Americans is in the denominator. A smaller number means a bigger total of deaths per American.
If there were zero Americans, then each would cause an infinite number of deaths.
TFA mathematically proves that Americans are terrible people.
Re: (Score:2)
Ooops..slashdot swallowed the brackets.
Slashdot will not swallow brackets ("[]") but it will swallow greater and less than ("<>") because they are meaningful characters in HTML, and Slashdot doesn't hold your dick for you with any BbCode bullshit or similar. If you select Extrans, though, it should go ahead and not eat the text you put into apparent HTML tags.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, this study says more about over-population and the relatively small percent of people being America than about how much carbon Americans produce.
I don't understand why it makes sense to blame overpopulation when the difference in CO2 production between US and poorest countries is over 150x per person.
Sad that this write-up is horrible (Score:2)
Re:Sad that this write-up is horrible (Score:4, Informative)
Your comment has nothing to do with the actual paper [nature.com].
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Grog not need read science, Grog smashes book and make book do! Do or smash! Do or smash!
Re: (Score:2)
And it has to be stopped further out on the global supply chain. There's a difference between cutting down on your climate footprint and *exporting* that footprint to China.
1 gallon of oil = n people pedaling (Score:2)
Who are they? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh fuck no (Score:4, Interesting)
This study has to have been commissioned by the oil industry. This is exactly the kind of thing that'll put people into a defensive posture and get them opposed to fighting climate change.
Politics 101 is that when you're trying to convince people to do something against their interests (in this case, tackle climate change so we don't all run out of food and water) you make them feel like they're under attack. That's exactly what this will do.
Re: (Score:3)
" Outside of research, Danny enjoys competitive stair climbing."
Re: (Score:2)
Cos, yeah - there are PLENTY of climate change deniers still: including roughly 99% of the USA's current minority party.
99% of the majority party supported support energy policies that would make global warming worse. At least that was true from about 50 years ago until about 50 weeks ago.
From the 1970s until last August the Democrats opposed nuclear power. Scientists and engineers studying global warming problem and solutions concluded that without nuclear power the chances for success on lowering CO2 emissions are near zero without nuclear power. Another scientifically supported resolution to lower CO2 emissions is use
If cigarettes exploded... (Score:2)
People are terrible with numbers, averages, and long term problems. That's why we have smokers.
Imagine if 1 out of 10,000 cigarettes just exploded and blew your head off rather than giving you cancer. There wouldn't be a single smoker anywhere.
The actual paper is sensational (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a link to the actual paper [nature.com]. The actual explanation of how they calculated the deaths is hidden pretty deeply, and involves statistical tricks like taking the first derivative.
The bulk of the paper is talking about the policy implications of what would happen if carbon emissions actually killed that many people. It isn't the worst paper I've read in Nature.
Re: (Score:2)
Nature is now a disreputable rag.
People thinking that reflects more upon them than it does the journal.
Re: (Score:2)
Alright, name a mainstream general science journal that is not a disreputable rag.
Cart Before Horse (Score:2)
As an American I have a couple questions... (Score:2)
As an American I have a couple of questions. First if I can get two other Americans to help me create enough carbon, can I pick who I can kill? Because, I can make a quick list of both people to help me and people that I'd like to kill. Second question, what if I only want to maim them? Does it take two other people, or can I just do that by myself?
Re: As an American I have a couple questions... (Score:2)
One more question (Score:2)
If we're really concerned about three Americans killing one person with carbon, if we can identify who this three Americans are then we should be able to stop them.
That should be solvable (Score:2)
We just gotta find those 3 people and stop them.
how do they calculate this? (Score:2)
Ok lets do some quick stats (Score:5, Informative)
300million Americans = 100million deaths round the world. Just a quick esitmate gives about 300k deaths worldwide/yr https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org] .
So, maybe it will take 100million/300k= 334 years for these stats to complete, or they are completely bogus. Plus the numbers I have are considering ALL natural disasters, I'm assuming that weather related disasters would be from climate change (and deaths from natural disasters are going down in time because we can warn people better). Somebody discredit the people who came up with this poor research.
Also most coal plants in the US have scrubbers that prevent most of the contaminates from going to the air, China an India do not and have much poorer air quality
This is from the Guardian (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
This is from Nature, one of the most prestigious science periodicals around.
Re: (Score:2)
Tremendous difference.
Guardian - spin = Nature
Re: (Score:2)
The Guardian headline matches the paper.
I'm sure Taco Bell isn't helping much... (Score:2)
Ground beef flatulence.
Peeing is more dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You can also pee enough into a cup to drown someone
Sure, someone whose whole face fits into a cup.
Re: (Score:2)
Survival of the fittest. (Score:2)
Now do China (Score:2, Insightful)
China accounts for over 50 percent of the total global electricity generation by coal. The US is only 11 percent - the same as India. Splitting this usage data up by individual person is stupid - every country will use far more power for industrial applications that residential.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Hey now (Score:2)
Okay - who was killed? With 332,987,277 million 'Murricans, that's a lot of people we killed. 110,995,759 in fact. but maybe a million here or there difference. Seems like the world population problems are fixed!
Now do China!
Problem solved (Score:2)
three average Americans will create enough planet-heating emissions to kill one person,
If the three of them manage to kill another American, the problem may fix itself.
emissions, schmemissions (Score:2)
Die prematurely, not killed (Score:2)
Quote: he analysis draws upon several public health studies to conclude that for every 4,434 metric tons of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere beyond the 2020 rate of emissions, one person globally will die prematurely from the increased temperature. This additional CO2 is equivalent to the current lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans.
Need to understand it in terms of lost person-years of life, not "premature deaths". If the emissions cause a person to die 1 second early that is rat
CCP Anyone? (Score:2)
I can't wait to see how many people one Chinese person kills...
Hrm...
From the article (Score:2)
While it takes just 3.5 Americans to create enough emissions in a lifetime to kill one person, it would take 25 Brazilians or 146 Nigerians to do the same, the paper found.
So, if we assume the average "American" lives 80 years, that means it takes 240 years of energy consumption to kill one person - of climate-related causes.
Question: How will we know when someone dies for Climate-related reasons, or are we to just take this as accepted fact and nod in agreement as politicians parrot this claim to justify Trillions in climate-related projects?
For every person born (Score:2)
Yeah right. (Score:3)
Just breathing is enough (Score:2)
Just the air you breathe out has enough carbon to kill you, and another three people besides. I don't even know what this title means.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:popcorn time (Score:4, Insightful)
Germans are very Green, nothing to look at there, save for them having the US chopping down trees for biomass [cnn.com], or building new coal plants [forbes.com]. It's not a difficult Google search to find ways in which Europe's green energy actions do not live up to their commitments.
This is not to say that I am not looking forward to a post-fossil fuel world, but that world is not coming by means of press releases. It will be by continuing to get viable sources of sustainable generation, storage and distribution --the latter two being the tougher nut to crack.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Too soon?
Re: (Score:3)
True, but if you think about it, aside of the combustion material, the concentration camps were pretty eco-friendly. Almost all machinery was replaced by carbon-neutral human labor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: popcorn time (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Germans are very Green
What's green and hates Jews?
The Snotzies
Nuclear power is the safest (Re:popcorn time) (Score:2)
Germany will have to reverse their ban on nuclear power or face their energy costs going up, CO2 emissions going up, and air and water pollution getting worse. Germany's decision to close nuclear power plants while keeping coal power plants operating just boggles the mind.
Germany's actions on keeping people safe from nuclear power is killing people. Japan did the same thing in responding to the Fukushima meltdown. France's decision to scale back on nuclear power will get people killed too.
At least in the
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No, they can talk to engineers and scientists.
What they need to do is stop listening to ACTIVISTS.
Engineers and scientists can learn something, hold an opinion, and have that opinion eventually changed due to sheer depth of data.
Activists form an opinion, then only learn the portions that agree with their opinions, and new data merely bounces off their certitude like steel jacketed rounds off a six foot thick block of AR500 target steel.
As to the rest of your point, I agree.
But don't expect to go far on sim
Re: (Score:3)
There's a comparison with some other countries and the world average in the paper [imgur.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:popcorn time (Score:5, Insightful)
"excess deaths per average citizen's lifetime emissions if all added in 2020"
So if instead of emitting every day of every year, as you do in reality, you instead emitted everything for your whole life last year, then more people would die now.
If CowboyNeal emitted his entire life's worth of farts right now, today, a whole bunch of people would also die. And I would be more impressed than I am by this story
Pseudo-math (Score:4, Interesting)
This article, by a former The Onion employee, is a great example of pseudo-math, akin to pseudo-science.
You pointed it it conflates rates (per year) vs total lifetime.
Others have pointed out that according to this "math", increasing the population (and thereby total emissions) will make less people die. Also, fewer Americans would mean more deaths, according to this Onionesque math.
Of course none of that matters if they put "climate change" in the title. If you're screaming about climate change, you can do the number of blades of grass in average yard divided by the speed limit in km/h and most people won't bat an eye.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's not that big a deal. We just need to find those three people.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah.
I was just thinking it it sucks to be that "other" person.
Re:popcorn time (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact of the matter is, you 'non-Americans' are just as culpable as we or anyone else is.
'People in glass houses', 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone', 'Judge not lest ye be judged', and so on.
Re: (Score:3)
Most non-Americans aren't just as culpable, Americans have very high per capita emissions.
Any Australians around here?
Re: (Score:2)
Not good by any means, but also not terrible.
Our independent remnants of the British Empire to the north and in the south pacific are both using more than us, for example.
Europe as a whole looks amazing when done in aggregate, but that's largely because it includes many millions of people who live off of $13 of income per day.
Economically prosperous Europe slides those numbers up by about 50%.
Any Australians around here?
I'm sure you threw this out so that you could call out one of the first world countries with worse
Re: (Score:2)
you 'non-Americans' are just as culpable as we or anyone else is.
The graph linked above [slashdot.org] betrays the lie of your "just as anyone else". The global contribution is far from even.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone who says we should be aiming for the per capita carbon output of the country formerly known as Zaire is going to have a hard time selling that argument to any single country that actually emits a measurable amount of carbon.
In this discussion, nobody was talking about pre-industrial or failed fucking states.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
A straw man. I never said that it's enough.
An accusation of a fallacy because you lack the mental capacity to follow an argument you're a party to is in itself fallacious reasoning.
One person claimed that everyone is culpable.
You said everyone is not, because the global contribution is not even.
I said that's disingenuous, because the global contribution is a series with truly ridiculous components.
You then countered with the UK as an example of an uneven contribution.
So, the origin of this entire argument was who was culpable, and your argument
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: popcorn time (Score:2)
Europeans generate CO2 too, Americans generate more per person. Don't take my word for it, Google it.
The first link I found was this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The worst offender on the planet was... A European country...
Not that I disagree with your point, because it is correct on average.
However, there's quite a bit of nuance.
For example, Germany emits 99.5% more per capita than Switzerland, while the US emits only 64.4% more than Germany.
Who's doing a worse job overall? It's complicated. Industrialization is different in different places.
I.e., while "Europe" may be useful in some ways as a comparison metric, they're clearly not some
Re: (Score:2)
Billionaires are some of the last productive people, with their wealth largely being a product of being born rich.
Take Bezos. Parents set him up with a good education and a loan, and now he mostly dicks around with shitty rockets rather than adding any value to Amazon. His contribution to Amazon's success is mostly figuring out high tech ways to exploit workers.
Re: popcorn time (Score:2)
If Bezos "billionaire" advantage is a college education, why the fuck are there so few Billionaires compared to the number of college graduates each year?
Perhaps a college degree isn't his only advantage? Bezos incrementally invented "Online Harrods" from his first online bookstore, then went on to invent the business of Cloud Providers, built on the 60s and 70s Timesharing businesses.
To paraphrase a line from a credit card ad "What did you do with YOUR college degree?"
Re: (Score:2)
Not just a college education, access to the network. I don't know what you call it in the US, in the UK it's the Old Boy's Club because many of the members used to be boys at private schools.
Bezos got started at the right time, and I'm sure he put in the effort. But he also had a huge amount of help, like being able to call on his parents for capital to get the business started and having a large enough home to run it from initially. And even if you give the credit for Amazon 100% to Bezos he doesn't deserv
Re: (Score:2)
Not just a college education, access to the network. I don't know what you call it in the US, in the UK it's the Old Boy's Club because many of the members used to be boys at private schools.
Bezos got started at the right time, and I'm sure he put in the effort. But he also had a huge amount of help, like being able to call on his parents for capital to get the business started and having a large enough home to run it from initially.
All excellent points.
I'm a very smart, very well educated guy, but what was really informative for me was getting to know the son of a Fortune 500 C* exec who dated my sister for a little bit. We were equally as smart and well educated, but it was really shocking how much help and advantages he had that he was blissfully unaware of.
The dude ended up starting a bunch of crappy companies that failed, but it didn't matter. He had legal advisors he could call on for favors, capital he could tap, office space he
Re: (Score:2)
Billionaires are the most productive members of society.
That is certainly not true.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If Google weren't there, then other search engines would be doing the same thing. Larry Page is a little exceptional because he actually invented the PageRank algorithm. Right now he is not productive at all, though.
People like Mark Zuckerberg are rich because they exploited a feature of our financial system, where having stock in a company that grows a lot can make you very rich. A more accurate measure of his contribution to society might be to look at how much he makes from dividends. Or another way woul
There is so much wrong with this (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal favorite is though is former president Donald j Trump. The basis of his fortune worth the whorehouse is his grandfather ran and the slums his father ran. Woody Guthrie wrote songs about Donald Trump's father it was such a well-known slumlord.
I guess what I'm getting at is no, billionaires aren't worth the cost. Any more than Kings were.
Re: (Score:2)
Money is powered (Score:2)
Re: There is so much wrong with this (Score:2)
Who else stepped up to provide better housing than Trump's father offered? Trump's father filled a need so desperate people took the abuse rather than be homeless. Why didn't the state/city step in?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:popcorn time (Score:5, Insightful)
Billionaires are the most productive members of society.
I believe you meant "the most extractive".
Capitalism is the most efficient system to allocate resources to increase the availability of goods and services.
...except for the things not covered by market prices, such as externalities like the one that's the topic of this submission -- so ironic for you to write what you wrote under this very article! And of course the pathologies of capitalism such as the existence of billionaire oligarchs.
Re: (Score:2)
Far less than they enable to be fed, treated with medicine, employed, and lifted out of poverty. Billionaires are the most productive members of society.
This is the most laughable thing I've ever read, let us not forget the last 23+ years the videogame industry billionaires has been stealing games from the public under the MMO/f2p marketing moniker by pulling/stealing the networking code out of games which started in the late 90's with ultima online and everquest, we were supposed to get dedicated servers like Neverwinter Nights (2002).
That's why dedicated servers disappeared, a standard feature was literally stolen out of the game and sold back to us minus
Re: (Score:2)
That depends on the moment that 1 is killed. If that is after its typical procreation period ends, there will be no drop in population.
Re: (Score:2)
It depends on whether you attach a windmill to it, or a fan.
Re: (Score:2)
I think we should break the study down to Republicans/Democrats. Which emit more carbon emissions and how many people does a typical Democrat kill vs a Republican? Anyone know?
I think it would help to break it down by individual. A list of billionaires and famous people ranked by how many people each kill.
I suppose there will need to be separate columns for hired hits to maintain accuracy. Also Al Gore must receive full credit for the lack of carbon use by the people he's killed.