"China and India, where many consumer products are manufactured, are the worst offenders."
So instead of merely blaming and regulating, it is ultimately upon all of us to change consumption behavior.
So instead of merely blaming and regulating, it is ultimately upon all of us to change consumption behavior.
On the other side China and India are both pursuing renewable energy faster than the US.
I was in Beijing last year for a layover. The pollution was so bad you couldn't see the runway from the terminal. It was so terrible you could even see it inside the terminal.
I think the pollution absolutely terrible, and it needs to be addressed.
But you know what? I'm even happier that the pollution is so blatantly terrible and visible. Why? Because if it wasn't so obvious, the populations of China and India wouldn't be demanding change, and the governments would be free to ignore the issue.
The fact that the pollution in China and India is so bad is driving these countries to improve regulations and curtail their pollution much faster than the US had to in the 20th century.
Pollution is terrible, but I'm really glad that the two most populated countries on earth are waking up and installing renewables at an unprecedented rate. It's not only improving their pollution situation, but economies of scale are making renewables cheaper for everyone.
(Talking to researchers, I don't know how far they're into publishing yet.)
Even if they both stopped every source of pollution instantly right now, the consequences would still last decades. Even if they do something, improving the pollution situation is not enough by a large margin, keep in mind the occident failed to fix their own air pollution issue to this day.
Economies of scale may well worsen the situation further due to Jevons paradox, while most renewables are actually not renewables at all.
The only way out is a radical global change including a large decrease in energy consumption and this will come when the massive overpopulation issue will fix itself through famine due to lack of oil to grow food "green revolution" style.
There's not doubt that reality will catch up on us, it is just a matter of time as this is now inevitable. Our choice is between crashing full speed ahead in a wall of brick or trying to slow down to crash in a hopefully somewhat less dramatic manner.
I think you're underestimating how much polluting the west has been doing. After all, China got into the game only in the last maybe 20 years.
As of 2011, the United States had released 28% of the world's total post-industrial revolution green house gasses, while China contributed 9%: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/21/countrie...
Now granted 2011 was 7 years ago, but just eyeballing, if the US had stopped all its emissions and China released its current rate of 9.6B tonnes each year, they'd have to emit for another 24 years before they caught up to the United State's emissions.
That's not to say that China shouldn't clean up its emissions before they become the new #1 emitter, but we who live in the west have to do our part as well.
This should also be concerning: The US has over twice the emissions per capita as China [1], and China is not yet done developing. Basically if all nations are aiming to develop into the united states, we're hosed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
That being said, both countries are attempting to move rapidly away from fossil fuels and dirty industries as their burgeoning middle classes start to clamor for cleaner air.