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Comment by Camillo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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