Greenhouse Emissions Drop Less During Economic Downturn Than Expected

An anonymous reader writes with a quick bite from Nature World News: "The contribution of economic decline in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is very low, reveals a new study. Researcher Richard York of the University of Oregon studied data collected between 1960 and 2008 from more than 150 nations in order to analyze the impact of economic decline on greenhouse gas emissions." From the paper: "In Model 2, the percentage of the population living in urban areas and the percentage of GDP from the manufacturing sector were included as control variables. This model has lower data coverage than Model 1 (154 versus 160 nations, and 4,134 versus 5,630 nation-year observations) owing to missing data on the control variables. The coefficients, at 0.752 for growth and 0.346 for decline, are similar to those from Model 1 and, as in Model 1, are both significantly different from 0 and significantly different from each other."

Population, GDP Accumulated Growth, Continued

[retroworks]

Simple. If the three billion poorest people go from earning $3,000 per capita per year to $6,000 per capita per year, the economy can slump and carbon increases.

Re:my guess

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is, that despite the cut in GDP, and the long, painful period of high unemployment, the economy hasn't actually been that bad. And that most of us have not had to change our habits much to cope.

"Despite of millions of people losing their homes and livelyhoods, it hasn't been that bad cause I still have mine."

Re:my guess

[roman_mir]

By the way, you are missing part of the formula for GDP, it's the deflator that they are supposed to apply to discount inflation. Of-course their deflators are ridiculously low, I have an 'informative' post with many numbers and links in it here [slashdot.org], which shows a few things about inflation and GDP. AFAIC GDP has been shrinking for a long time now in 2 ways.

1. The 'production' part of GDP is shrinking all the time. Look at the trade deficit numbers, here is a page with history on it in PDF or text [census.gov]. For the year 2011 the trade deficit was 559Billion dollars and it's growing all he time. Of-course the total personal consumption in USA is mostly on services, not on goods, in fact 2/3 of all consumption is services and only 1/3 is goods. 11Trillion was spent by US consumers in 2011, so about 3 Trillion was spent on goods and the rest was energy, food and services (like healthcare and education for example), so in that sense US consumer consumes mostly 'US' service. However if you look at the goods (go to Walmart and compare how many things are made in USA vs foreign made, like China), you'll find that most of the goods bought and sold (and even food, 90% of sea food comes from Asia) is made elsewhere.

2. The deflator that is used is reverse engineered to fit the propaganda. With the nominal and pre-deflator GDP being 2.9%, the deflator is set to be 1.6. (read the linked comment, I give quotes and links there), that's GDP revised down from 1.7% to 1.3% (post deflator) for the second quarter.

70% of GDP could very well be consumption, at least in countries with unusually low government spending

- I am sorry, this sentence makes no sense. 70% of GDP is consumption, that's not because of low gov't consumption, the exact opposite is the case, that's because of very high consumption stimulated by gov't (especially non-existing interest rates and free money allocated by the Fed to the member banks, who then buy T-bills and bonds and allow gov't to keeps spending). It's low production that is the problem, that's why GDP is 70% personal [about.com] consumption [lewrockwell.com], it's the actual number [policymic.com], what [businessinsider.com] can I say [mybudget360.com]? You see, when the production portion of GDP shrinks, the consumption portion becomes bigger and bigger part of the number, and if the consumption is stimulated artificially with fake money and 0% interest rates, and as long as the foreigners are willing to take dollars for their exports, then consumption even grows, doesn't just stay the same.

The reason that the consumption is mostly of foreign goods is exactly because the production part of GDP is disappearing.

The wealthy don't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Until they start asking the half of America that pays no income tax to start contributing something, or to sacrifice some services, the teensy amount they can raise by asking the one percent tthat pays the most (and receives little in return) to pay more won't even be a drip in the bucket.

Bolstering the economy by theft only goes so far.

Re:The wealthy don't matter

[bp+m_i_k_e]

It's unfortunate that the "they-pay-nothing" argument is made by so many, including a presidential candidate. This statement is false.

Even the bottom 20% pays an average of 17.4% of their income in taxes. It is absurd for anyone to say that some group "pays nothing." It is grossly absurd for a well-educated, former governor and many supposedly informed supporters, including a member of the House Budget Committee, to say "they don't pay anything."

Here is one summary of the overall tax burden as a % of income in 2011:
17.4% - Lowest 20% (Avg cash income: $13,000)
21.2% - Second 20% ($26,100)
25.2% - Third 20% ($42,000)
28.3% - Fourth 20% ($68,700)
29.5% - Next 10% ($105,000)
20.3% - Next 5% ($147,000)
30.4% - Next 4% ($254,000)
29.0% - Top 1% ($1,371,000)

Source (pdf): http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf [ctj.org]