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Comment by staticelf | Hacker News Reader

This is why big countries suck. They are slow to change and a wrong move is horribly damaging. Look at the US or China, no matter how I or all my countrymen live in Sweden it won't really matter if climate change deniers get in charge in the US for example.

I just think it's so sad to see everything go to shit due to some greedy assholes that won't invest in solutions that are effective AND sustainable.

I plan to become a climate change prepper in the future because shit will hit the fan sooner or later.

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China halts work on partly built coal plants.

http://dailytimes.com.pk/business/23-Oct-16/china-axes-part-...

And their renewables deployment is so fast, overcapacity is a concern.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-growth-in-renewable-...

EDIT: I'm not ready to call climate change solved yet, but at the deployment trajectory China is on, the rest of the world will have no choice but to follow, as China is pushing renewable generation costs very low (which undercuts nuclear and fossil fuels, pushing their prices higher making renewables even more competitive). Solar and wind are both below 3 cents/kWh unsubsidized, with wind expected to fall another 15% in the next 2-3 years, and solar another 25% in the same time period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter

And as we all know, if there's any nation whose official economic statistics are completely trustworthy, it's China. Why, even if China's famously open and transparent government did feel the urge to mess with the statistics, their dynamic free press, unfettered by government controls, would be all over it.

Well, you don't have to trust just statistics, go visit one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in...

I don't think you can just gaze at a dam from the visitors' center and accurately deduce how much renewable energy is being produced by hydroelectric power across one of the largest countries in the world. Why, even buying a souvenir T-shirt in the gift shop might not be enough to gain that information.

There are nuclear power plants that are being decommissioned early in the US from lower renewable costs. http://www.npr.org/2016/10/24/498842677/waste-families-left-...

That doesn't make any sense. If the US were split into the 50 states, you would have to get 50 governments separately to agree to carbon regulations, instead of one. Same with China or with any other large country.

Also, a large country is likely to have regions that will lose big in case of global warming, while other regions are indifferent or even stand to gain. The large country's single government has reason to oppose global warming in that case, which means that it can put all of its diplomatic weight on the side of global warming countermeasures. And once countermeasures were agreed to, they can be enforced across the entire country. If it were split up into smaller countries, the ones that will be less affected by global warming have an incentive to avoid countermeasures so they can exploit their competitive advantage there.

> If the US were split into the 50 states, you would have to get 50 governments separately to agree to carbon regulations, instead of one.

Sure, but then about half of those would actually do something about it.

Of course, the other half would keep thumping the Bible or Atlas Shrugged (or both), but even so that's a fraction of the current level of inaction.

The Bible gives no good reason to deny climate change. The leaders of the two largest Christian groups, the Catholic Popes (specifically Benedict XVI and Francis) and the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, have long been supporters of green policies.

And actually, as it describes humans as the stewards of God's creation, green policies should be essential to their acts as Christians.

However, in the US, specifically in the South since that's my experience, many actively deny climate change and refuse to pursue green policies, ostensibly on religious grounds though when discussing it with them it either makes no sense or they can't establish any. It's very frustrating. They see climate change and green policies as some sort of atheist, pinko, commie conspiracy.

I know. It's largely the literalists that go off the really deep end.

Literalists would be more likely to want to act as good stewards of creation.

Technically true, except those who claim to stick to a literal interpretation of the book are much more likely to perform a selective reading of it, keep what they like, discard what they don't. Ends up being just another bullshit name.

So what you're saying is "there are religious people and I don't like them"?

No, what I'm saying is - bullshit is everywhere, and religion does not have a special exemption from it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12798868

A good example is Jim Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. According to him, the Bible tells us that GCC is impossible because the atmosphere is under the control of God, and God would never allow anything harmful to humans like that to happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe

50 states wouldn't have the global power to keep oil on top for so long. We wouldn't be in this mess w/o the combined power and control and capture of the US government.

I think big countries should be made to pay the smaller ones affected by climate change. We weren't the ones that caused it but will be made to suffer the most because of it(rising tides, effects on the ocean which we depend on for our food source, lack of rainfall). We are very much seeing the effects already!

Guyana is already trying to cash in in a comparable way: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6318

Yeah, I'm going to believe it when I see it.

USA still haven't even paid what it owes to Nicaragua for fucking it up.

The US also owes about 1.3 billion to the UN due to non-payments.

Lol, the Marshall Plan.

Is that the UN whose human rights councils are always headed by the worst human rights abusers on Earth? Just checking.

Opposition to large states certainly makes sense if you are concerned about climate change, but perhaps not for the reason you think. Large centralized governments and economies cause wasteful and short sighted resource consumption (and thus CO2 production) through massive debt bubbles on a scale never before seen.

It would be stupid to crash our economy and then find out that the "solutions" didn't work. Or that we come up with technological fix to the problem. Or that that whole thing was just a ploy by leftists to seize power.

Anyhow, if you expect 7 billion people to do anything in regards to climate change, don't hold your breath.

> Anyhow, if you expect 7 billion people to do anything in regards to climate change, don't hold your breath.

Except that China is halting construction on 20+ coal plants. And deploying renewables faster than any other country. And putting in place heavy subsidies for electric vehicles. Chinese citizens overwhelmingly support renewables and the cost associated with it:

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/29/china-cities-overwhelmi...

Americans? One presidential candidate wants more fracking, the other one thinks China invented climate change, and everyone else is oblivious in their SUV on their way to Starbucks.

One might argue its easier for China to evolve to a non-carbon economy because their citizens haven't tasted the decadence Americans have of a carbon-intensive lifestyle; regardless, China is going above and beyond what the US has ever considered for climate change policy, and drag us Americans along for the ride. Thanks China?

China are also in the situation where their depedence on coal and their poor current record in cleaning up industrial output makes the negative effects of the status quo much more noticeable.

When the West reached that stage, renewable power was less of a consideration and option, and so we opted for emissions standards and similar than brought the noticeable effects down to tolerable levels, and we are paying for it now in weaker support for putting in place a proper fix.

Fracking has actually been beneficial in reducing climate change because the carbon footprint of natural gas is far lower than coal. Most O&G companies are currently pushing for a carbon tax.

That is like saying a ball peen hammer is beneficial in reducing damage to the skull compared to a sledge hammer.

And one saying which is relevant is "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

> Or that that whole thing was just a ploy by leftists to seize power.

Well that's a particularly ridiculous theory.

> ... just a ploy ...

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/

On the right hand side of that chart, it says he gets his data from both reconstructions and modern temperature measurements. How on earth are you supposed to compare those two? This is essentially just another hockey-stick graph.

Usually I like xkcd, but that one is wrong at the end. The data actually matches the "best case scenario" surprisingly well. I was really amazed at how that model has performed when I first saw it, it is really interesting. https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gwpf_nasa-hansen_...

I get all my scientific knowledge from comics on the Internet too.

The comic has citations. Why won't you address them, instead? Or is there any particular conclusion it draws from them that is incorrect?

> This is why big countries suck

Yeah, for the small countries that have no influence whatsoever. Sweden once also was a great country (I doubt you would have complained back then) but it overextended in its wars and got basically castrated by the Russian Empire.

I believe you have other problems in Sweden right now after your men allowed your country to be invaded.

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