These Countries Are Cheating

By overcounting how much carbon their forests suck up, and undercounting how much carbon their industries release, countries undercount their total carbon emissions.

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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Paris Agreement: a 2015 treaty negotiated by 196 parties that aims to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
- Carbon emissions: the release of carbon compounds into the atmosphere, mostly in the form of CO2.
- Carbon sink: anything - like a forest - that absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases.
- Flaring: the process of burning off excess gas from an oil or gas well or refinery.
- Climate TRACE: a nonprofit that uses satellite data to project emissions.

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CREDITS
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David Goldenberg | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Lizah van der Aart | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC

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Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke
Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes
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[TripleSuccotash]

It's almost as if not having consequences guarantees a lack of effort.

[diracio]

It is astounding and extremely depressing that we are still putting out more CO2 annually

[florian]

As a Canadian it's been sucky to see how the lying and denialism is still so rampant. Canadians have a much better reputation than we deserve

[paulkingtiger]

One of the problems we face is that, in a democracy, how do we get politicians to prioritize things that have consequences beyond their lifetime, when they are focused on a 4-5 year election cycle?

[AE_Sub]

saddest part is that developing countries are suffering from large countries outsourcing the CO2 intensive processes to their countries because it's cheaper

[PremierCCGuyMMXVI]

I think it’s important to note, that even during the pandemic in 2020, our species was still releasing emissions of greenhouse gases, just the rate went down, and it’s since recovered.

[ThePotatoHandler]

Australia is another particularly bad example. During the Kyoto conference, we threw a massive hissy fit right at the end to allow us to start counting at a higher base line. Than we emitted more into the atmosphere. Then we earned a bunch of carry over credits to keep emitting more, despite not earning them. Then we made a bunch of carbon credits, except we created them out of nothing (awarding credits for people not cutting down trees that weren’t even going to be cut down, creating credits in the outback where nothing grows, etc). We then sold these worthless credits to oil & gas companies so they could keep emitting while claiming to be carbon neutral. Its pretty depressing that most countries are being just as shoddy as us. Hopefully we get our act together before we set off too many positive feedback loops and end up turning the planet into a hellscape

[zetsumeinaito]

You forgot the part about where first world countries are offloading pollution heavy manufacturing to far less regulated countries for profit. And they are doing this by having open trade(no/low tariffs) with those countries, incentivizing companies to move. This tends to happen because politicians are either -bribed- donated/lobbied to, or have shares of businesses who would benefit from such a move.

[bazoo]

3:15 - There _is_ such a thing as "sustainable forestry", but that's certainly not what logging industry is doing. It is done by "culling" perhaps one tree out of hundred or more a year when it nears the end of its life, preventing its "corpse" from decomposing and freeing up space for saplings to grow. But, of course, it is too low-intensity to be very profitable.

Tree plantations also make sense, as long as they are not "sold" as "reforestation", but as a source of construction timber which _does_ tie up some carbon that used to be in the atmosphere.

But all this is small fry. If we are to have any hope of avoiding civilization disrupting (if not destroying) degree of warming, we must decarbonize energy production, transportation, and cement and steel production, along with radical rationalization of agriculture. There are no _technological_ obstacles for any of these, and they are often equally if not more profitable that business as usual, but not for entrenched players.

[alvaroaguado]

I think it would be positive also to talk about the countries that are doing better than promised. To incentivize pride in the matter

[this_is_patrick]

Wow, my country, Indonesia, not lying about something for a change. Crazy.

[Cruznick]

Thank you for calling this out! It makes me so angry as someone with a degree in environmental sciences. We CAN reduce our emissions but due to greed don't. It frustrates me to no end.

[skrdman]

"When the measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure."
- Goodhart's Law

[Doriann]

So what you are telling me is that the decades and decades of increassing public awareness about climate change has all been for nothing? What a lovely way to start my day

[ArgonZavious]

Last time i was talking to a green party member here we talked about how we have 25 years before we cant fix this anymore. its a politics thing, unfortunately the popular opinion in Canada is "there all the same"... and poorly run elections... not a lot of Canadians realize that the government works for us and not the other way around.

[tails]

The rich big wigs will tell you to stop using plastic straws and walk more while taking a jet three times a week to their favorite restaurant.

[MozartTheGOAT]

If everybody held spoken promises like that, there would be peace, harmony, and unity in the world and the unicorns would return

[danilooliveira]

its just a huge prisoner's dilemma, the one that plays fair will lose, so you cheat to not fall behind the other cheaters. the problem is that in the end EVERYONE will lose.

[rossplendent]

Another critical cheating technique is the way most "developed" countries have offshored much of their industrial production to the global south. Massive amounts of profit are made by companies in places like the U.S. and Europe without ever needing to release carbon *domestically*. By building their factories in poorer countries, they simultaneously get to exploit cheap labor and get to brag about how "green" their home countries are. This has led to a pernicious myth that most of the expansion of carbon emissions is happening in the global south, as these poor nations industrialize -- but who is reaping the majority of the gains of this industrialization? Still the wealthiest countries and the biggest carbon cheaters.

[jparkerj]

"Hey we gotta do something even if it means earning less money."
"Yeah true. You first."