Wind and Solar Now Generate Record 12% of Global Electricity (dw.com) 100
A report released on Wednesday found that wind and solar energy made up a record high 12% of global electricity generation in 2022. Meanwhile EU countries are lagging behind with wind power expansion. From a report: All renewable energy sources, including nuclear power, made up 39% of global electricity last year according to the report by independent energy think tank Ember. The authors predict a phasedown of gas power along with a reduction of coal-fired power, forecasting that fossil fuel generation will decline by 0.3% this year. Electricity is as clean as ever, with the share of solar power rising by 24% and wind by 17% from 2021. Solar and wind energy now makes up over 10% of electricity in more than 60 countries. Ember's annual global electricity review takes data from 78 countries which account for 93% of global electricity demand. The European Union gets 22% of its electricity from wind and solar power. However, EU countries seem to lag behind global wind energy expansion, logging 9% growth from wind power -- below the global average. "The EU started the race to renewables early but, as the world accelerates, it cannot afford complacency," said Sarah Brown, Ember's Europe program lead. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February last year caused concern among EU member states about declining fossil fuel imports. The European Commission put forward a plan to increase renewable energy to 45%, an increase of 5% compared to the previous year.
Nuclear (Score:1)
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Like life, it just evolves out of thin air.
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The report talks about low-carbon energy sources, because this is the race we are engaged on. The slashdot summary made a shortcut.
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Funny)
If they truly cared about low-carbon, we wouldn't be putting carbonation in soda pop, we wouldn't be using pencils in school,
Glad we finally have a real scientist talking. We finally solved the CO2 problem: it's all due to pencils and soda. And to think the IPCC thought it had something to do with fossil fuels. What a bunch of noobs.
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Because lobbyists and the French [ft.com].
Facts from the EU (Score:3)
There were two dramas in the EU a few weeks ago:
- Germany changed its mind at the last minute, and reversed its position on the ban of new ICE vehicles by 2035. Because the car lobby is that strong in Germany. End result: loophole introduced in the law to allow sales of ICE past 2035.
- France had the energy plans for EU include nuclear, which is a low-carbon energy source, in the production of hydrogen. End result: more low-carbon energy usable to finally decrease CO2 emissions in the EU
Let's not forget who
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The problem is not ICE's but the fossil fuel they presently run on and the EU regulation makes it legal to use carbon neutral fuels (e-fuels). Curiously this was already covered in the regulation but this time a mandate was added such an engine would never run on fossil fuels.
Re:Facts from the EU (Score:5, Informative)
If you do believe that, you must be extremely naïve. There is no way today to make a car "detect" it's running with e-fuel or normal fuel. Scientists asked about it during the negotiations two weeks ago were laughing at the idea. Another thing you might consider: the car manufacturers lobbying for that are not just the luxury brands, but the brands that actually sell a lot of common-people cars. E-fuels cannot be made at scale for the volume of cars those manufacturers are selling (as a point of comparison, it takes 10 times more electricity per km to produce e-fuel than if you were just using that electricity in an electric car; if you think we will have that much electricity to spare in 2035, you are delusional).
The effective result of that inclusion is that cars using fossil fuels AND e-fuels will still be allowed to be for sale in 2035. Thus working against limiting CO2 emissions.
I understand you want to be an optimist, but you just have to look at which lobby pushed that agenda, and where their money goes.
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There is no way today to make a car "detect" it's running with e-fuel or normal fuel.
Perhaps not, but we can tax fossil fuels at the point of production so that nobody will want to cheat because they cost more than biofuels.
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Perhaps not, but we can tax fossil fuels at the point of production so that nobody will want to cheat because they cost more than biofuels.
Well sure, in non-democratic countries. But if you're looking for a way to increase voter turnout in democratic countries, taxing fuel enough to make it more expensive than exorbitantly priced biofuels is a fantastic way to motivate people to get out and vote against you.
Many people feel like voting is a waste of time because all of the candidates are garbage, but if you're directly taking away their ability to afford to fuel their cars you're pretty much handing victory to any candidate who simply promises
Re:Facts from the EU (Score:5, Insightful)
These countries being democratic have many political parties and none of significance would support lower taxes on CO2 causing fuels.
Speaking for myself, I find it hard to consolidate 'democracy' with a two-party system, it looks too much like what they have in China or Russia.
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Well sure, in non-democratic countries.
Once the majority is driving EVs, there will be little voter resistance to higher gasoline taxes.
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Once the majority is driving EVs, there will be little voter resistance to higher gasoline taxes.
I agree, but I believe the topic here was trying to force change with punitive tax rates, not taxing something nobody cares about after the change has already occurred. But once the majority are driving EV's there won't really be much need to apply huge taxes in order to subsidize biofuels because nobody's going to put biofuels in their EV.
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Presently it's mainly the Porsche and Ferrari makers that want e-fuels and most of their customers will (already) pay whatever it takes.
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I'm not in europe so I didn't follow that close the e-fuel discussion, but find very odd that they decided to include an exception to ONLY a fuel that requires some extreme amount of energy to be produced and is really expensive to run on instead of using ethanol, which is a well established fuel in several countries, much cheaper than producing gasoline from CO2 and electricity, and you can convert existing cars by basically replacing some rubber hoses and gaskets and updating the engine control unit.
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When we beat global warming, THEN you can start whining about nuclear again.
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because nuclear is low-carbon
but it is not low waste. and it is very high cost.
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> but it is not low waste. and it is very high cost.
Yes.
Which is why I wrote:
When we beat global warming, THEN you can start whining about nuclear again.
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Woke is about hating, silencing and cancelling people who disagree with you.
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Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
If we wanna "uhhh achtualllyyy" energy then none of it is renewable, the sun has finite fuel.
Gonna become a "peak hydrogen" guy now.
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Fun fact (Score:3)
Solar energy is basically the by-product of nuclear reactions happening in the sun.
Geothermal energy is the thermal energy in the Earth's crust which originates from the formation of the planet and from radioactive decay of materials.
So those two "renewables" have actually deep root in nuclear reactions.
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Can anyone define the features of renewable energy in a way that excludes nuclear fission?
Sure:
"Renewable energy is that for which the only resources consumed for its ongoing generation are resources for which additional replacements occur naturally at a rate more rapid than their consumption and will continue to do so for time periods on less than geologic scale."
Fission plants would only be "renewable" if additional fissionable fuel arrived from, say, meteors and volcanic eruptions more rapidly than the w
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Fission plants would only be "renewable" if additional fissionable fuel arrived from, say, meteors and volcanic eruptions more rapidly than the world's plants consumed them.
Taking uranium out of seawater means more uranium will be dissolved in the sea from being exposed uranium in bedrock. Taking uranium salts out of the sea means more salts dissolved elsewhere to replace it, and with plenty of volcanoes and meteors adding uranium to the bedrock we aren't going to run out. We don't "mine" seawater for uranium because we find it more practical to mine it from dry rock. We'd get more energy our than we put in by getting uranium from the sea but we don't do that because it is
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Extracting uranium from sea water would require, with any currently known technology or one in development, pumping such a truly vast amount of water it would be as impractical as it would be ecologically damaging for anything more than supply of a small fraction of our energy needs.
Which is also true for a lot of elements in seawater that are only present in traces. Some others are present in amounts that are worth going after when you're pumping for some other reason, and a few are worth pumping (and, sa
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What about the waste? Do you believe renewable energy sources produce no hazardous waste? Of course they do. They produce "forever chemicals", chemical compounds that are highly stable and can poison the environment if not handled with care. Radioactive waste is by definition going to decay away. The lie that is often repeated is that this waste would last thousands of years. That's not true because the waste produced by nuclear fission is going to be very short lived or very long lived. Any isotopes
One word: Breeder Reactor (Score:2)
Breeder Reactors make more fuel than they use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Added bonus: WAY less radioactive waste
Why it isn't used: proliferation fears, more expensive to build than non-breeder reactor,proliferation fears, miners have produced a steady stream of mined Ur
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Breeder Reactors make more fuel than they use:
Not by magically making fuel out of nothing. A breeder converts the common nonfissionable uranium isotope U238 into fissionable, making the same amount of U go hundreds of times farther than in a conventional reactor. The fuel is still used up eventually.
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Not by magically making fuel out of nothing.
Correct. Also true of solar. Solar converts light into electricity. The light is created by the fusion of hydrogen and helium. The hydrogen and and helium are used up in the reaction. The fuel is used up eventually.
This is exactly as relevant as your point, which is to say not at all relevant.
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Why is nuclear considered renewable?
Because the article is wrong about this point. Nuclear is carbon-free but consumes fuel, so is not a renewable.
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It depends where the fuel comes from. Nothing is truly carbon free, but nuclear can be on a par with wind and solar if the fuel is found locally and doesn't produce too much pollution to extract and process. At worst it can emit about 10x as much CO2 per kWh.
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think of it as "non-fossil". Or "unlimited supply".
For some applications, it makes sense to classify it along with, e.g., solar.
(Nuclear is more "renewable" than biomass, btw...)
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Lower emissions per kWh, but more kWh produced (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's put some facts together:
- From this Ember report: "The carbon intensity of global electricity generation fell to a record low of 436 gCO2/kWh in 2022"
- From this IEA report [iea.org]: "Global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 0.9% or 321 Mt in 2022, reaching a new high of over 36.8 Gt"
So, we produced cleaner electricity, but as we used a lot more of it (and not to replace fossil fuel usage as we should have), the end result is more CO2 emissions.
People need to focus on the end-goal, which is to reduce CO2 emissions. The % of renewables, or even nuclear for that matter, is of no importance is we keep emitting more and more CO2 year after year.
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An increasing percentage of renewables and nuclear is how we will achieve the end-goal, which is to reduce CO2 emissions.
No, this is only part of the equation. The whole equation looks like this:
1. electrify usages that are using fossil fuels today (heavy industry, transportation, agriculture...)
2. increase low-carbon electricity sources (and not just renewables by the way, unless you want to miss the end-goal)
3. increase efficiency, and energy sobriety, because when you do the maths, just the two items above won't be enough
Up until now, we have been focusing a lot on 2., and going in the opposite direction for 1. and 3.
Which
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We would see 1. as "An increasing percentage of renewables and nuclear".
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So, we produced cleaner electricity, but as we used a lot more of it (and not to replace fossil fuel usage as we should have), the end result is more CO2 emissions.
Just imagine for a second if we hadn't produced cleaner electricity.
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Just imagine for a second if we hadn't produced cleaner electricity.
We produced more energy, and used it for new things. If we hadn't produced that additional "cleaner energy", two things could have happened:
- either we would have produced that additional energy with fossil-fuels => bad
- or we wouldn't have used that additional energy for new stuffs => better
In the end, we have a problem of emitting too much CO2. If we keep emitting the same amount of CO2 (or actually more, since coal-based electricity produced raised by 1.1% in 2022 according to the article report),
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There's been absolutely zero correlation between global cooling/warming/climate change and CO2 production.
A climate change denier in 2023, how pretty. You are right on one thing though. We are not talking about correlation between CO2 emissions and climate change. The consensus is about causation. Carbon dioxide emissions are the primary driver of global climate change. This is what the science shows, and what 99.9% of the actual scientists agree on (which is why we call it a consensus).
Hello, plants eat/breathe CO2. They need it to live. When there's more CO2, plants thrive. Thriving plants is not a sign of the apocalypse, but quite the opposite.
Holy sh*t, nobody thought of that. You should share that scientific discovery with the world, we can resume our fossil fuels u
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Consensus is not science. This is a lesson that I learned in a high school literature class during a lesson on truth in advertising. Just because 4 out of 5 dentists agree on something doesn't make it true. It can mean a lot of dentists got paid for an endorsement.
It would be far more convincing to talk about the science than the consensus. The problem is that it is difficult to wrap up the science in a way for the average voter to understand in a short amount of time. Maybe we could incorporate this s
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A consensus among scientists IS science.
(A consensus among corrupt dentists has nothing to do with science - what surprise!)
If the consensus among scientists is that smoking causes cancer, then it's wise to use this as a basis for a tobacco policy - despite your 100-year heavy-smoking neighbour.
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At one point in time there was a consensus among scientists that smoking improved health. Does that mean at the time smoking was healthy? No. It could mean people weren't looking for evidence scientifically but rather looking for a consensus.
I don't even want to argue about global warming because to me that debate doesn't change what needs to be done. We need nuclear fission energy or we will face an energy shortage. The science shows us we need nuclear fission energy or we face an energy shortage. Th
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Citation needed.
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Citation needed.
https://www.healio.com/news/he... [healio.com]
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Welcome to the world of consensus science - where most scientists are paid for their opinions.
If you want the opinions of scientists who aren't paid for their opinion, you should probably be listening to the ones who go against the consensus.
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this is an equivalent of those "corrupt dentists" in the parent comment, having nothing to do with science.
To sum it up: in your effort to disprove the point in question, you produced a totally irrelevant argument. Perhaps no relevant one exists.
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Shhhh... it's a cult. Just let them be.
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When there's more CO2, plants thrive.
Not when we keep cutting them down.
Yes, for the most part, "the Earth" will be just fine with more CO2 in the atmosphere and higher temperatures. It's the humans that will be fucked, which is why we care about stopping it.
Re: Lower emissions per kWh, but more kWh produced (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell that to Venus
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Thanks for pointing that out - it was my first question after reading the summary.
Emissions still not reducing
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Developing nations are going to develop no matter what. We can't realistically expect them not to demand similar quality of life to what we have.
What we can do is help them avoid the mistakes we made, and get renewable energy costs down to the point where it's cheaper to do the right thing than to build a coal plant. We are actually already there on the cost of wind power, it's the expertise and the support systems (storage) that need working on.
In that light these numbers are encouraging. Developing nation
Bravo Humanity (Score:3)
Your country (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a list of countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Click on the "RE % of total" column to sort by that value and see where your country is.
Are you ashamed yet?
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no, not at all.
Sins of the country (Score:1)
Ah yes, each of us should feel shame on a personal level because of the choices of some representatives we may or may not have voted for and some unelected bureaucrats in a government department. People can do some things individually to reduce their carbon footprint, sure, but what is this sins of the father shit?
Greenhous gas emissions (Score:3)
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Just adding fuel to your comment.
France has been producing low-carbon (50g CO2eq/kWh) electricity since the 70-80s. Beaten only by countries with enough geological features to allow huge hydro-based electricity generation (those countries usually have a low population too).
In the meantime, most other countries have been producing electricity at 700-800g CO2eq/wkh. Even Germany, often lauded as a renewables pionneer, was in 2022 generating electricity at ~400g CO2eq/kWh.
Imagine if all countries had built nuc
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Just adding fuel to your comment.
I'll add more fuel.
France has been producing low-carbon (50g CO2eq/kWh) electricity since the 70-80s. Beaten only by countries with enough geological features to allow huge hydro-based electricity generation (those countries usually have a low population too).
It's not just hydro that requires favorable geological features to provide low cost, reliable, and low carbon energy. Geothermal energy is great for a number of nations to get energy while keeping CO2 emissions low. Perhaps with some new technology the places where geothermal energy is economically practical can increase. Until then we will need more use of nuclear fission to lower CO2 emissions without driving up energy prices.
Imagine if all countries had built nuclear plants in the last 50 years... Climate change wouldn't even make the frontpage of slashdot... At some point, people will look back and see who were the criminals actively hindering progress towards lower CO2 emissions. Those criminals are directly responsible for so much loss of biodiversity happening because of global warming, that I don't even know how they can call themselves greens or environmentalists.
Indeed. Long ago the lie about nuclear energy is how it i
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Another bunch of bullshit from MCmoron.
As you have been told so many times, nukes are too slow to build, too expensive to build, the power they generate is too expensive (French nuclear is massively subsidised by govt) uninsurable, unsolved waste problem, and nobody wants nukes.
Funny how all your unfounded accusations are indeed actual bullshit that have been debunked multiple times.
The one about subsidies is the funniest one: nuclear plants in France have paid for themselves multiple time, while providing dirt cheap electricity compared to the rest of Europe in the past 40 to 50 years. Even in the UK, with the over-budget of Hinkley Point, it is expected for that plan to make a profit (30 billions costs vs 60 billions estimated return, and even more if they extend the plant life
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Those cutting corners believe that they will get away with it, or at least that it's worth what is in their eyes a very small chance that something might go wrong. So your argument is not sufficient to assume that nuclear power would be just as safe if regulations were reduced.
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The Obama administration introduced funding for nuclear research for SMRs.
I remember the debates between Obama and McCain when they were both running for POTUS. In one such debate nuclear energy came up. Obama talked about possibly maybe perhaps providing funding for research into nuclear fission as a low carbon energy source. McCain talked about building nuclear power plants. Which one of those policies would bring more low carbon electricity to the grid? Research into SMRs, or building actual full sized operational power plants? Building power plants would lower CO2 emiss
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EU is NOT a big deal. They continue to SLOWLY drop their emissions and FF usage.
America and Australia continues to drop ours, and quickly.
It is nations like China and India that are the concern.
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How much of that 12% was actually being produced by petroleum (eg. gas, diesel, NG, generators) running when wind wasn't blowing or sunshine wasn't to be found?
By definition, none of it. If it's not from solar, etc., it's not counted.
How much of it was supplied by ecologically destructive batteries (if any)?
None of it. That's storage, not production.
I don't consider it a net ecological win if our actual energy production just moves over to small diesel generators
It's not, and you know it's not.
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You don't appear to be aware of how energy production is calculated.
If power comes from a solar plant, it doesn't matter if it's being generated by the "peak load but no solar" diesel generators, or the solar panels. It's still considered "solar power" to the energy markets.
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"How much of that 12% was actually being produced by petroleum" - how clueless can you get?
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You appear to be unaware that a "solar plant" produces "solar energy" for the energy markets, regardless of whether the sun is shining or not - because there are backup generators capable of providing the same load. Every solar installation has these.
how valid is data from Sandbag Climate Campaign? (Score:2)
Are they counting it by (mega) watts generated or by percentage of sites of a type generating power? I really don't believe the numbers and I think someone has an agenda to tout wind and solar.
The issuer of the report is the Sandbag Climate Campaign operating under the name Ember. When i see the word 'campaign' I have to have suspicions.
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Are they counting it by (mega) watts generated or by percentage of sites of a type generating power? I really don't believe the numbers and I think someone has an agenda to tout wind and solar.
If only they had a download page [ember-climate.org], where they could provide the actual report [ember-climate.org], the monthly CSV data [ember-climate.org], and the methodology they used [ember-climate.org]... That took exactly 30 secs to find, please don't be that lazy guy who makes baseless accusations.
That said, I agree with you in the fact that some people have an agenda to tout wind/solar (gas lobbies are big proponents of renewables for instance, because it gives them the opportunity to build more gas-plants to make up for the intermitency of renewables; which is also why thos
EU is falling behind? Oh please (Score:2, Interesting)
the question is how do you normalize data? Normally, I do not support per capita, however, this is an OK area for per capita. Better yet, would be / GDP (real, not PPP). Why GDP? Because most of our energy goes towards manufacturing, services, basically businesses.
Regardless, lets look at various areas:
Wind?
Here, you can compare EU-27, against America, Canada, Australia, and China. [ourworldindata.org] What do we see? That EU as a whole remains in the top 3 while nat
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Better yet, would be / GDP (real, not PPP).
So you stupidly believe the pollution depends on currency fluctuations?
You're not off to a good start.
Why GDP?
Oh this one is easy. So people in rich countries producing a lot of pollution can blame poorer countries. And then absolve themselves of all the pollution they have and are continuing to pump into the atmosphere.
And then being such the transparent hypocritical asshole that you are, you proceed to use Per capita when it suits to make utterly irrelevant claims.
And then you get to the only slightly relevant