Hacker News Reader

No denying there is a problem and that we should work on a solution, it is just getting media attention now. Politicians now are under public pressure to fix it.

The person I replied to was saying that India's PM2.5 pollution is equatable to CO2 pollution done by the US. Which is really not true, plus he saw that opinion in a documentary about climate change. Which would be a valid opinion.

View on HN

Carbon footprint and particulate matter are two different issues. The US has an enormous carbon footprint, but the air quality in the US is much better than India's. This also includes densely populated places like Manhattan. Increase in PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and SO2 directly affects and damages the lungs of healthy individuals. Yes the US has a carbon footprint problem, and yes they're atleast trying to solve it. But their citizens aren't choking. People in New Delhi are. Stop trying to conflate the two issues. Long term climate change != particulate matter in the air we breathe, though they're both important.

I didn't conflate the issues, he equated them.

In my opinion, particulate matter is a problem that will be solved with a small amount of effort. And now in India it will be, we had similar scare in 1998 and Delhi became the first city in the world to convert entire public transportation plus all the for-hire auto-rickshaws to CNG.

On the other hand, an entire political party in USA denies climate change is even real. Plus, it's not a problem that will be fixed at all, we can merely contain it's effects.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com