Hacker News Reader

Comment by toisanji | Hacker News Reader

I would read the full speech from Trump, he makes some good points, although im sure some of it is false and not sure how it compares to other factors.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/01/politics/trump-paris-agreement...

"For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years -- 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries."

"China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it: India can double their coal production. We’re supposed to get rid of ours. Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants."

"In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries."

"This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States."

"Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris Accord, it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund -- nice name -- which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments. So we’re going to be paying billions and billions and billions of dollars, and we’re already way ahead of anybody else. Many of the other countries haven’t spent anything, and many of them will never pay one dime."

"Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree -- think of that; this much -- Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount. In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America -- and this is an incredible statistic -would totally wipe out the gains from America's expected reductions in the year 2030, after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars"

FYI, I'm not into politics and I'm 100% pro environment, I do try to be open and hear every party's point of view.

View on HN

1. Poor countries are allowed to increase their carbon emissions because their current emissions are already low per person, and requiring then to lower emissions would basically be telling then they're not allowed to become developed countries. They will not sign on.

2. We're paying poor countries to mitigate these effects, by subsidizing their use of cleaner energy to industrialize. And to compensate them, since the areas most negatively affected by climate change are also poor.

3. The United States is not, in fact, particularly generous about foreign aid.

4. The Paris Agreement is intended to be a start - the reductions are so small in part to win over right-wing Americans, who in turn have the audacity to turn around and blast this agreement for not being effective enough.

You are just echoing the politician's syllogism: we must do something, this is something, we must do this.

Your point that we could not get anything better is not an excuse for doing something bad.

Why is the Paris Accord "bad"?

A major economic and ecological policy agreed on by nearly the entire planet is no small task. It took years to create and is a compromise - we can do better and that was the plan, to iterate on it.

Its bad because its not a level playing field. Its tips the global economy away from Americans because they are too "Developed". Turns out there are lots of Americans in fly over country who disagree.

It is true that they disagree. It is not true that they're lives are definitely harder. For every person in the US, there are four in China. Even imagining that China had the same wealth distribution as the US, which it does not, that still means there are vastly, vastly (at least 4x) more people with lives that are empirically more painful, with less medicine, less availability of electricity, and less food. This isn't because China is doing a bad job, it's because there are a lot of people.

You are correct that there are many more people in China and that being poor in China is worse then being poor in America, but the solution is not to export global competitiveness to other countries until their quality of living is on par with Americans. Once that ability goes away it will not come back, and as you can tell no one really cares about the plight of rural Americans who stand to be the biggest losers from the change

No one is talking about giving developing countries a pass until their GDP per capitas are on par with developed nations..

Even with business as usual emissions, China's per capita GDP will maybe be half of what the US's will be in 35 years. I doubt climate mitigation policies would chip away at much of that difference.

The fact is the US polluted the living fuck out of the world to get to it's developed status, and then turns around and says "no you cant do that". So a level playing field already makes no sense.

The point of this is to achieve reasonable outcomes, while also allowing developing countries to grow reasonably (and live another billion out of poverty) while helping them with it.

If the developed worlds can't afford another $100b, I really don't know what to say? Especially considering a lot of that comes around to contracts and exported goods from the very same developed countries! They're not about to start printing solar cells in a country that is barely feeding itself!

As for "fly over country"... I really dont know what to say here. The world doesn't work like the simplistic metaphors that are being peddled to them. For example, the 'government budget is like a family budget' is a nonsensical analogy that is false. Or comparing government debt to credit card debt. These analogies stand in to trick the casual reader in to certain points of view (anti tax and anti government spending ones as it turns out).

What to do about this? Well, honestly, outlawing Fox News would probably be a good start.

You are looking at this from a macro level and completely ignoring the actual repercussions these policy's have. These other countries who you are saying need to "Develop" are not behind the "Developed" countries in any metric other then quality of life statistics. However the policy gives them an advantage in a globally equivalent marketplace. So no it isn't a reasonable outcome to ask a sovereign people to not be able to compete for business fairly simply because on average their citizens have more money then another country.

> These other countries who you are saying need to "Develop" are not behind the "Developed" countries in any metric other then quality of life statistics

That little figure happens to be kinda important. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and state that most people consider their quality of life to be somewhat more important than abstract ideas about global economic policy.

"Fairness" had nothing to do with how we got here. Or, to flip it around, why would any country (let alone the ones the U.S. has abused for various reasons, artificially retarding their growth) agree to a model that dooms their citizens to a pre-industrial life?

This is no different than the arguments for flat taxes because progressive income tax is "unfair".

So is this a policy to redistribute wealth or to deal with climate change? Because it is advertised as something to deal with climate change, but all I see in it is a way to redistribute wealth. If we are serious about climate change then write a policy that deals with it. Everyone makes steps to reduce pollution, not half of us makes steps to reduce pollution and give lots of money to countries who do nothing so they can build up their green energy capabilities and use them to undercut a major source of domestic economic growth

I think you're attempting to drive a false distinction. At this scale, doing anything about anything involves "redistributing wealth". And if that's all you see, well, I'd suggest that has more to do with what you're looking at than what's there.

If you approach this sort of global negotiation with a precondition that it not alter the existing economic order, that is the same as refusing to negotiate. If that's your view, then fine; there's clearly no point in discussing further.

But if the goal is to deal honestly with climate change, the reality is that there will be winners and losers. Just like happened in the run-up to where we are now. Guess what: we won the run up. Now we have to decide if we're willing to give up some of the "unfair" share we've had for almost a century in return for our grandkids having something vaguely like the quality of life our parents had.

Some days I really think the U.S. is just doomed by our culture. Thankfully, I'm more chipper other days.

dkhenry, alternatively it is far more unfair to have allowed developed countries to have developed all of their infrastructure while generating 80+% of excess carbon emissions , while banning developing countries from exercising this same path.

The "family budget" and "credit card debt" analogies aren't too terrible. They are a decent start. They don't crash and burn until you have to account for inflation.

> What to do about this? Well, honestly, outlawing Fox News would probably be a good start.

So your final analysis is to tear up the Bill of Rights?

That's where you and I disagree. The different requirements laid on developing vs. developed countries are in my opinion a feature, not a bug. Demanding from India and and Sub-Saharan Africa to remain pre-industrial nations while we get to keep polluting at a much higher per-capita rate is not in any sense a "level playing field" - it's grandfathering in the advantage we currently gain by polluting more.

Yes, it would be "grandfathering in the advantage we currently gain". You don't want that advantage? Are you tired of winning?

Trump said: "We gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning and you'll say please, please Mr. president, It's too much winning! We can't take it anymore!"

Look, it was a joke. You're expected to like winning.

I suppose you could move elsewhere on the non-level playing field if you actually don't like winning. You'd have to make some major lifestyle changes. I bet you do like winning.

Except in this case you aren't winning. We're all losing. The climate isn't just going to be nice on developed nations 20 years from now. It's going to be bad for all nations because we didn't act.

We're all losing. Already.

You work so hard on "winning" that you push much more poor and desperate people to the breaking point, you're going to have problems.

In 10 years regardless of this agreement flyover country will have more renewable energy jobs than manufacturing jobs lol. Iowa, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Nebraska, North Dakota and Kansas generate 25% of their total energy from just Wind and Texas leads the country in total renewables just from Wind. Yes Texas produces more renewable energy than California. And crazy part, this was almost 90% accomplished in the last 6 years only.

These states will turn blue if federal policies harm them. Farms barely surviving put 5 wind turbines on their land and make 50k a year for 30 years. Counties with nothing going for them happen to have the best Wind in the world.

I agree, and we will continue to see those jobs grow. I don't see this as us moving away from green jobs and a reduced carbon footprint. This is about us signing away our competitiveness because someone thinks it makes things fair. We will continue to produce more renewable energy and continue to make it more economic. Other countries are free to continue as well, but we shouldn't give them money so they can invest in industries that will attempt to undercut domestic firms in the global marketplace.

> Turns out there are lots of Americans in fly over country who disagree.

I could throw out statistic too.

> Seven out of 10 Americans support remaining in the agreement, according to a national poll conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Communication

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/most-ame...

But isn't the whole thing non binding in the first place ? Isn't this just supposed to be start so each nation on its know can plan and do it in its own way ?

Incremental !== bad

We must do this and more.

Do not let perfect be the enemy of the future of this earth.

How, given arguments in GP, does this actually do anything of value? Note that I do not consider signaling how much we care as valuable.

Given we can't actually leave the accord until 2020, Trump's whole speech is nothing but signaling.

This was not a treaty ratified by the senate so it's not legally binding in any way.

So then, "leaving" it nothing but signaling.

There is a difference between a) not going along with something is considered "doing something" and b) rejecting an existing "doing something" Treaty that only 2 other countries did not sign, that has minuscule economic impact ... without having a replacement.

That (b) is what happened. That means Trump doesn't think something must be done - which means this administration does not care about climate science and it's predicted (and proven with current findings) disastrous impacts.

There is no alternative - either we begin to fix the problem with a global framework, or we suffer the tragedy of the commons on a global scale - and we're already seeing the effects of global temperature warming and ocean acidification.

If these are the best replies to Trump's remarks, I very sadly must agree with Trump. Extremely disappointing.

What makes these points disappointing?

Ya they seem pretty sound to me.

While they seem like decent replies to me, there is no reason to think that you'd get the best replies to a complicated policy question from a random commenter in a forum for technology entrepreneurs.

Which is why I said "if these are the best replies".

My reading of that idiom is that it implies an assumption that they are the best replies. My comment was to point out that there's no reason to think that would be the case.

You've picked one single response that you don't like. Please read the rest in this thread, and then find a better source because there's no reason to think HN commenters are particularly expert in this area.

This was the top-voted response to the top-voted comment when I posted.

1. I don't think global warming cares who emits the carbon. If climate change is really as big and life changing an issue as everyone knows it is they will sign on, there is no reason to sign away the livelihoods of Americans to benefit China, what happens when you do that is those people whose jobs you have just ended do in fact have opinions and votes.

2. We are subsidizing them with no benefit to us at all, and in turn we are also giving them the ability to outperform us in manufacturing the capability to create clean energy, if you want to help them use clean energy mandate that it comes from local companies. No one will like someone else showing up with bags full of sovereign wealth and tipping the scales. These countries per capita might be poorer, but from a global markets level they are right on par with their American counterparts.

3. Debate? We are by far the largest foreign aid donor.

4. The Paris Agreement was signed by the President without the consent of congress, partially because it didn't win over right-wing Americans.

At some point we need to be adults about this and do something, the country is not supposed to be run as a Dictatorship by either party, all its doing is slowly killing everyone

2. I'm pretty sure not having oceanic level rise, and drowning out the most expensive real state in the world is a benefit to us! The notion that somehow the developed world gives $100b (over what time frame? That matters a lot) and gets nothing in return is ridiculous. Manufacturing clean energy stuff is not within grasp of most developing countries. So they have to import tools, expertise and goods... from where?

3. The US gave $31b in foreign aid. Which sounds generous, until you do it per capita. In which case the US slips way off. The closest economic comparison would probably be the EU which gave $87b away. I, like many, consider charitable giving and aid a sign of strength, not a reason to whine about how unfair life is when you're the richest.

2. They are not importing tools and expertise, they are have the tools and expertise and they are not only deploying it locally they are exporting it to America. If you want to see some a benefit then write the mandate that American companies must be used to provide the clean energy capabilities to the developing countries. Not only would that be rejected it would be a bad idea for many reasons, but the opposite is deemed to be OK.

3. Even per capita we are 21st in the world, not bad especially when you consider that as that number gets bigger the return you get on it diminishes.

3. Yeah, why on earth would a super-rich country be expected to be near the top? We agreed to a 0.7% target for aid, and we've been failing to meet it.

>Even per capita we are 21st in the world, not bad

But not exceptional. Certainly not worth complaining about either.

> they are have the tools and expertise and they are not only deploying it locally they are exporting it to America

What countries are you talking about? What mythical poor countries have tools and expertise and what not? And to compete with us against what?

We've moved to a global economy and basically doing what wealth of nation stated, we have specialize in things we do best while other countries specialize on their own thing. If Swiss and Japan wants to make awesome watch go for it. If labor is cheaper in China then okay. But they can't and have not taken higher end skill set. You just can't export those.

And you just side step the world being screw to concentrate on our country. But at the same time OP addresses that with saving our coastal property.

The mega cities that make a boat load of GDP is Los Angeles and NY which will be screwed with the rising sea water.

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

Re. 2: Most of the aid funds are actually transferred in the form of subsidies to deals with companies from the "giving" country. For example, India is massively expanding its solar energy capacities. This is happening partly as a deal with German companies and the German government, which subsidizes the whole trade. That way India gets cheap solar energy infrastructure and Germany supports its solar energy industry.

I honestly don't know if this is happening in the same way with American companies, but to be honest, if it's not that would make me want to take a hard look at the reasons for it. Lack of effort from the government to make those deals, or inability to make attractive deals - which would be a rather worrying indicator of the american industry's health.

By completely exiting, Trump is effectively leaving the field of renewable energies to other countries. By relying more on burning fossil fuels for energy he can definitely give America a short term boost by preventing energy costs from rising further, but he might also cripple its renewable energy industry - which employs more US citizens than Oil, Coal and Gas combined.

Trump wouldn't have had to exit the agreement to do what he wants by the way - the agreement does not have any penalties for not fulfilling it, and it allows every country to adjust its own goals in the agreement, without asking anyone else for permission.

> I don't think global warming cares who emits the carbon.

It doesn't. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere today was emitted by the western world though and it's up to them to show leadership and address the problem they created.

With regards to 1), that isn't about global warming caring; that's about people caring. The current international system will not back a plan that prolongs the very low living standards that around half the world lives in. For example, ain't no way that India would sign a treaty agreeing to remain pre-industrial indefinitely.

But wouldnt you agree that a per capita limit is the way to go.

If not would you give Luxembourg the same carbon emission allowance as india?

I dont think keeping developing countries down by limiting their per capita to a much lower standard will fly in this century.

As an Indian, I am with Trump with this one. Per capita consumption would be the wrong way to look at it at this stage. If these people really cared about the environment they should have been promoting nuclear or promoting less(zero) meat consumption. India and China should have the same targets as everyone else. We don't need concession to set up coal plants. Removing restrictions on nuclear tech would be better.

China and India each have over four times the population of the United States. They have to take some collective responsibility for that so their emissions per person should be lower.

China and India have ¼ and 1/11 the per-capita emissions if the USA. Thus the Chinese could triple their emissions output and still be "cleaner" than the USA. India could increase their emissions by an order of magnitude and still be "cleaner" than the USA.

As the 7th most polluting country in the world, the USA should take responsibility to show that their emissions per person should be lower.

This is how Trump carefully frames the debate: talking about increases in emissions without referring to current emissions.

The USA creates far too much pollution, no doubt about it. If China and India only stop emissions increases when they reach per capita parity with the USA then we're all in a lot of trouble.

Per capita is the wrong way to look at it. As someone living in India we don't want us to aspire for that kind of emissions. I belive we should start with a freeze on top ten countries. India can grow in other ways.

I'm sorry, what? They should take collective responsibility for not being divided into a dozen smaller states like Europe is?

Europe is sufficiently integrated to consider it as a bloc with regards to this issue. Europe's population is twice that of the USA and half that of China/India. If Europe's emissions increased to the same per capita level as the USA that would obviously be a bad thing.

What country gives more foreign aid, either in total or per capita, than the USA?

In total terms, none - the US is much bigger than other developed countries (unless you count the EU as a bloc, in which case, yes, the EU, by almost three times).

In per-economic-output terms, MANY. The EU average is 0.47% of GNI [1], while the US gives 0.17% of GNI, and Sweden (the outstanding example) gives a whopping 1.4% of GNI. Outside of the EU, Japan gives "only" 30-ish% more than the US, at 0.22%.

Another interesting stand-out is Turkey, which despite being MUCH poorer than the developed world gives 0.54% of GNI.

The United Nations and OECD long-term target is 0.7% of GNI.

[1] GNI is a modified version of GDP which adds income earned abroad by residents and subtracts income earned locally by non-residents.

[2] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...

>1. Poor countries are allowed to increase their carbon emissions because their current emissions are already low per person, and requiring then to lower emissions would basically be telling then they're not allowed to become developed countries. They will not sign on.

China's current emissions is at 7.7 T/capita. India's current emissions is at 1.9 T/capita. A fair and equitable solution would be to impose a hard limit at, let's say, 8 or 10 T/capita for everyone, no exceptions. This way everyone plays by the same rules.

If you offered these terms to China and India, I'm pretty sure their leaders will take it, despite the harshness of it.

"requiring then to lower emissions would basically be telling then they're not allowed to become developed countries"

It sounds to me like the effort needs to be in making green energy more affordable than non-green energy. This would benefit all nations.

Money talks. If it's cheaper to go green, even the most die-hard conservative will go green (anecdotal case in point: my die-hard conservative grandfather, who drives a Prius).

And that's exactly what that big chunk of cash is supposed to be for - to help developing nations start out with cleaner power generation.

Right, but it does so by giving them money to spend on expensive stuff, which treats one of the symptoms instead of the root cause.

What I'd sooner advocate is to instead give that money to organizations working to make that expensive stuff actually cheap for everyone (or at least cheaper than the alternative of sticking with fossil fuels). That way, it's more economical for everyone (not just rich countries, and not just poor countries) to skip the fossil fuels stage of industrialization and jump straight to green energy everywhere.

A few counter-points:

- US, per capita, has the highest CO2 emissions of any developed country [0]

- It's a little unfair (depending on your idea of fairness) for developed countries to have benefitted from industrialization and polluting the environment only to close the gate behind them and blame other countries for trying to do the same and catch up in development.

- It's expensive to force nations barely entering industrialization to forego the easy route of using coal/oil/whatever pollutant and jump straight to what can, sometimes, be a more expensive energy source.

- Climate change is a global problem that doesn't mesh well with purely isolationist ideologies. This, primarily, is the biggest gripe with the current administration. It doesn't want to lift a single finger without seeing itself as the primary benefactor. This last part is purely opinion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

Just a nitpick. According to the list you referenced, the developed country with the highest CO2 emissions per capita is Luxembourg. The US comes second.

The US is second, the spirit of your point stands though.

Another surprising thing I learned from the list, US emissions have decreased significantly from 19.6 to 16.4 (tonnes per capita) during the obama administration.

> the developed country with the highest CO2 emissions per capita is Luxembourg. The US comes second.

You're right, that was an oversight on my part.

> Another surprising thing I learned from the list, US emissions have decreased significantly from 19.6 to 16.4 (tonnes per capita) during the obama administration.

This may actually be, in large part, due to the EPA. It would be interesting to see data for more recent years as well as end of this year (if it's not too soon) to see how it all changes.

The decrease in emissions is due to increased emissions requirements on coal plants (lots of smaller ones have been shutting down) and fracking.

Fracking makes cheap natural gas which drives electric generation investment towards natural gas which emits about 1/2 as much carbon per unit of energy as coal.

Low gas prices means that the investments required to meet coal regulations won't ever pay off. Plants shut down.

- US, per capita, has the highest CO2 emissions of any developed country

It also has one of the highest GDP (output) per capita. Output requires energy input.

I don't think there's a single economist in the world, without significant bias, who doesn't believe that China will be a serious economic powerhouse when it becomes a more developed nation.

For a developed country, the US has quite low GDP output per emissions. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...

Only Australia (another country full of climate change denialism) and Israel fare worse. Canada is rather comparable.

On the other hand, some European countries (e.g. France, UK) are nearly double gdp per emissions. Even Germany with its relatively large industrial sector has far better GDP per CO2 ton.

That's looking purely at CO2. Not energy.

Why is that relevant?

Either the US has poor energy efficiency (GDP output per energy input) or the US has energy sources that are highly carbon intensive. Both are bad.

> It's a little unfair

In this context, unfairness is required. It is unfair to tell the entire planet to stop burning carbon. We have been doing it for the better part of 200 years, why do we have to stop now? It is unfair.

But faced with reality, the realities of the universe, of our planet, fairness isn't on the table, the long term survival of billions of people is.

I disagree with flat out withdrawing from the climate accords, but saying its unfair so the two most populous countries in the world can continue to build up fossil fuel infrastructure for the next decade + is absurd. It should be an international stop, with developed nations subsidizing the cost of development of not-yet-first-world-countries by providing them access to cheaper clean energy, not giving them cart blanche to keep burning carbon.

See it's stuff like this that makes me suspect that the climate change debate is more about virtue signaling than any actual threat. Because really if we honestly believed that the earth was warming because of carbon and that this presented a serious threat to the planet, we wouldn't be like "oh well fairness dictates that we let some countries keep emitting high levels of carbon." That consideration wouldn't even come up in a situation where we were faced with a serious planetary threat.

The only reason that this is even coming up is because climate change proponents, deep inside, believe that there will be no serious adverse consequences from climate change.

> The only reason that this is even coming up is because climate change proponents, deep inside, believe that there will be no serious adverse consequences from climate change.

That's not the case at all. The world isn't really a black/white place. In an ideal world, we'd all stop right now and focus -- concertedly -- our efforts on reverting climate change. Unfortunately, life just doesn't work like that.

You go ahead and tell two large, thriving and growing, economies that "oops, we screwed up the planet, but at least we made a ton of money and our citizens live a nice quality of life! Wait, what? You want to improve your country, too? Well, you see, we sort of screwed up the planet and now you need to bear the responsibility on our behalf. Yes, that means stifling your economy and keeping your citizens in poverty. Yes, this also means the world will continue to view you as poor, undeveloped countries. What's that? For how long? Well, we don't really know, I mean, it could be a while..."

But it's not as if China, India, etc haven't benefited from the West's carbon-fueled economic growth. It was that economic growth that led to all the various technologies that they've imported. The West has also borne, and is bearing, the costs of R&D on green energy.

If we are talking about "inequities", I would say these countries took an "unfair" leap in technological development because of us, so it is not entirely unreasonable to say the disadvantage of less carbon use has been more than offset by tech transfer. Especially since China and India are both notorious for not respecting IP rights.

If not for the West, neither of these countries would even be in a position to want higher carbon emissions.

But you're just sidestepping my point.

In the case of an actual planetary threat the argument you describe about letting poor countries catch up would be incoherent and insane. Let's change the scenario here and make it more extreme, imagine instead of CO2 our industry released lead and we knew over time the whole world would get lead poisoning and all humans would get sick from lead poisoning and die out if we continue on our path. In such a scenario, would we

1) Have rich nations stop emissions out lead but still allow developing nations to have lead emissions cause, hey we may all die, but it's only fair, I mean they should enjoy the same standard of living as us

2) Have everyone stop putting out lead emissions because, as crappy as it is, everyone attaining a western standard of living is not as important as preventing human extinction.

I think we would all agree that option 2 was the only option. Option 1 would be incoherent and insane. The only case in which we would even consider option 1 is one in which there is no real coherent planetary threat.

Now climate change proponents may not be suggesting human extinction but you are suggesting widespread, possibly civilization ending catastrophe. This leaves scenario 1 as the only real choice and scenario 2 as incoherent and stupid. Yet climate changers still advocate and openly push for scenario 2 . . . which would lead any reasonable person to question the sincerity of their belief in planetary environmental catastrophe.

> But you're just sidestepping my point.

I think I'm not making myself clear enough. Politics often requires compromise. Until we have a global hegemony, there's no way to enforce one set of rules across all others. This is also the reason you can have such wildly different political views and oppositions of governance that can both, simultaneously, work for their respective regions while not working well for the whole.

By painting the issue as black/white, you're grossly neglecting others' needs. It's easy to say that when, by no stretch of the imagination, you're likely living in a well-off and developed country with a pretty decent quality of life. Please, recognize the advantages and luxuries you've been afforded and take a moment to understand that others don't even have a fraction of that. They're just trying to reach a fraction. Can we resolve this climate problem and simultaneously keep developing countries from stagnation and regression? Sure, it just won't be easy. And that's why there are compromises made.

>Politics often requires compromise.

But potential planetary catastrophe is not a political issue and not an issue that allows for much compromise. Sure there is political hand wringing about whether it is really happening and what its consequences are . . . But once you accept that it is real and potentially destructive it becomes a question of preventing planetary catastrophe which is not political and seems very very black and white and not open to compromise.

>Can we resolve this climate problem and simultaneously keep developing countries from stagnation and regression? Sure, it just won't be easy

If climate change truly has the negative potential that you claim, how could you even risk it - if it really were as bad as you say wouldn't the consequence for both developing and developed countries be much worse by allowing for continued emissions?

> But potential planetary catastrophe is not a political issue...

Tell that to the American Republican party.

> If climate change truly has the negative potential that you claim, how could you even risk it

We've crossed the point of no return already, the question is now "how do we minimize the looming repercussions"? Part of that is to have the world transition, even if at different rates, to renewable energy. There's a lot of hang-up on this different rates part. There's no blank check for China/India on this, they just have a longer period to catch up in renewable energy.

The developed world has committed to a reasonable upcoming transitional period and the developing world will be carried along, financially, to keep up or given a larger transition window.

I'd love for the world to have just done this a decade ago, but that's not the case. I'd love for us to stop today, immediately, all over and just change to renewables, but that can't be the case. Again, the world's complicated and neither one of us armchair politicians really grasp just how complicated geopolitics are.

Worth noting that we can't even really leave the Accord until 2020, so there's a lot of political posturing involved here.

This was all debated for years, so none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. We went into this eyes WIDE open.

China got a good deal, yeah, because it had leverage: it's the manufacturing capitol of the world. It could very easily have walked away with no commitments at all.

As for developing countries, of course we are going to ship our coal jobs over there - they can't afford to build renewables right now and must bootstrap with cheaper in-country energy stores like coal. Meanwhile we can afford the latter and should not be using dangerous and dirty methods just to save money.

100 billion over many years spread across dozens of countries really isn't that much. This is just another way for Trump to say we should be spending money on the US. We should, but we also have responsibilities to the rest of the world that predate all this stuff. We're part of a global community and he is trying to back out of it.

I seriously suspect his numbers in that last one are off or highly misleading. We should all watch for responses from those in know.

We supposedly can't leave until 2020, but who would enforce that?

There is also the option of staying, but reporting our carbon emissions with alternative facts. Done to an extreme, that means we get the payments.

What you describe is what everyone is doing anyways. My country, Canada, is "in" the agreement but mere weeks after signing approved a controversial liquid natural gas project in B.C. that just by itself would blow away our ability to meet the Paris agreement commitments completely.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/lng-petronas-...

Thanks for posting this. If any of this gets a bit heated, totally not directed at you.

There's a lot of false dichotomies in this. I haven't fact checked anything either but just addressing the points:

1) China: China is a developing nation, not on par in the US on any quality of life indicator. They still plow fields by hand or with oxen in a large area of the country. We are the most powerful nation on the planet. Obviously, there should be differences.

2) India: India has ~1B people, with about ~250M making like less than $5-10 dollars a day. They basically had no market economy until the 1980s. Again, comparing them to our responsibilities is laughable.

3) "In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries." This is an absurd comment. We aren't going to buy coal from China. Coal jobs have been dying in the US for decades and will continue to do so because we don't want to use coal. And "be allowed to" doesn't mean they will. China is also building more solar than anyone else in the world.

4) "In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States, and ships them to foreign countries." Ok buddy.

5) "calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments" - This is a leadership item. If you think as the richest nation in the world we should help the poorer countries find green, economic ways to grow, then what's the problem? Also, it's not like we don't interact with the other parts of the world and aren't affect if they are polluted. I'd take this more to heart if his words on "fixing stuff at home" had any of that in his actual budget. 200B over 10 years? right.

6) "two-tenths of one degree" - This is because we should have started this shit in the 70s. His fears are correct. This is a first step to more and more restrictions because we are altering the planet in ways that probably already can't be taken back. "14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America" - so we should just not have any of our gains at all?

It's just so much "What do I get out of helping? What's in it for me?" rather than, "Hey, let's be leaders and lead by example and show the world that we, the USA, live up to our myths as the 'Good Guys'."

> They still plow fields by hand or with oxen in a large area of the country. We are the most powerful nation on the planet. Obviously, there should be differences.

What is that specific thing or infrastructure that china and other developing countries are missing, that makes them unable to do this (stop polluting)?

Where they can't afford the more efficient methods of industrialization and must resort to the dirtier methods? Powering a country by coal is one such example. China has huge reserves of coal but little oil and natural gas. So what are they suppose to do? Renewables are expensive, although it is dropping in price, but they are also not useful at all hours and their production varies on conditions. Not all of China have plentiful sunshine. Coal is cheap, plentiful, and reliable. That's an easy choice for China.

Are you saying poor countries should NOT industrialize to help save the world after the industrialized nations have had 100 years to pollute all they want and generate enormous sums of wealth in the process? Why would any developing nation sign on to that?

>China has huge reserves of coal but little oil and natural gas.

So the real reason is not that china is a developing nation, but it has little oil and natural gas? That is not going to change, right? So you are saying that China can burn coal forever?

And what happens when a country run out of oil and gas. Can it start burning coal if it is available? Doesn't this mean that the source of pollution will keep shifting perpetually, without a net reduction in emissions?

Why not help these countries with setting up renewables, as much as it is possible.

>Are you saying poor countries should NOT industrialize to help save the world after the industrialized nations have had 100 years to pollute all they want and generate enormous sums of wealth...

No one is saying anything about stopping industrialization. But it does not make sense to exclude some countries on matters like this. The US had 100 years to pollute does not make much sense. Other countries also had 100 years to develop. That they weren't able to do so is no fault of US or other developed countries....

> Why not help these countries with setting up renewables, as much as it is possible.

That's precisely what's in the Paris Climate Agreement.

Sorry, I think we may be talking past each other and misunderstanding our views. Yes, agreed that industrialized nations should help and developing countries should cut back on dirtier methods of production. I was trying to inject the viewpoint of developing nations and underline why developing nations are getting aid and some leeway in the Paris agreement.

Give us nuclear, remove the restrictions on export.

Just to pop in on this "Other countries also had 100 years to develop. That they weren't able to do so is no fault of US or other developed countries"

That's a real real real strong blind spot on how Western nations have been interfering in developing nations for decades. Africa, the Middle East, Asia all have a long and storied history of the West actively interfering with their development. We 100% are now having to lay in the bed we made.

>storied history of the West actively interfering with their development....

There is no blind spot. I am aware of this possibility. But that does not change a thing....That is like saying since you developing your business ate into your competitors business, you owe them something, and you have to lay low for a while while they grow their business (because of limited resources or something...)....

If there is any valid criticism of the Paris accords, it's that they aren't stringent or BINDING. Which is the exact opposite of Trump's complaints about them. By the very nature of them being non-binding, they don't impose anything on the US.

Just that fact almost entirely undermines whatever Trump said.

In addition, however, new coal is already more expensive than renewables, which are getting cheaper at a rapid pace. However, more importantly, it's significantly more expensive than natural gas. The odds that the US would build a coal plant are minuscule (and even if someone did, assuming that somehow coal got cheaper than natural gas, the amount of money saved over building a natural gas plant instead would be meaningless).

I would have thought a master dealmaker like Trump would know that giving up something you weren't gonna do anyways in exchange for anything is a good deal.

But finally, none of this matters, because Donald Trump could have continued to do whatever he wanted (build coal plants, increase US emissions, etc.) without the Paris accords imposing any sort of mechanism to stop him from doing it.

What this shows is that the US cannot be trusted to stick to even a promise as toothless as the Paris accords. Combined with the lack of reaffirmation of Article 5 in NATO, the only real effect this will have is diminish the US's standing among its allies.

The Paris Accords were largely symbolism but important nonetheless in bringing everyone to the table, and showing a way forward and showing that climate change is something all countries need to handle and worry about. Donald Trump's act is also symbolism showing that the US doesn't care about agreements and pacts and that Climate change is not something they really believe in.

Btw, both Chinese and Indian governments have targets that are much more stringent than what they agreed upon through these accords, and both are well ahead of even those more stringent targets.

India already looks like a dump, we need a freeze.

Really wish this was at the top, instead of a comment that simply calls the president "shit-the-bed" Trump.

It is scary how people, even on HN, go on a hating spree with out actually looking into these details. If you go on reddit, you see the same thing, but multiplied 10x.

It is a sickening display of how even "smart" communities, like HIN can harbour stupid behaviors and beliefs as long as the majority shares it....

Except this is misleading because those points would only be good if they didn't have a very clear reason, which the top reply to this comment lays out very well.

Here is a fact check for many of these quotes: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jun/01/...

I think you might want to take a look at that, it supports what he's saying but as is typical of these fact checking sites, couches it in lots of "well yes but" or "broadly correct, but 'needs context'". I mean look at his statement on India:

> Trump: "India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it. India can double their coal production. We're supposed to get rid of ours."

> India does have plans to nearly double its coal production, and the agreement does not prevent that. But the Paris Agreement does not even mention the word coal, nor does it do anything to put a global moratorium on coal.

Oh the Paris Agreement doesn't mention coal so what he's saying isn't correct? The point Trump was making is that the Paris Agreement isn't stopping India (and China) from polluting. It stops _us_, but it doesn't stop _them_.

Amen. Every "fact-checking" site seems to go out of its way to editorialize the facts with what I should think about them, instead of limiting their purview to, you know, the facts in question.

What was Trump supposed to say? "The Paris Agreement doesn't have the word 'coal'"?

---

Don't forget: Being technically correct is the best kind of correct.

They are providing additional facts, which may or may not change your point of view. If the additional facts are not interesting to you, that's cool. But consider, maybe the information they provide is interesting to other people? For example, the top-level poster in this thread asked many questions which are explicitly answered in this article.

Context matters a great deal. If you treat facts as binary variables then you're not going to develop a very sophisticated understanding of any issue.

Agree but the picture they paint with this _is_ a binary one. Anything less than a "his statement is 100% factual, no additional commentary needed!" is treated as evidence that Trump is a big fat liar by people like OP.

You should try to separate out how you understand someone else's interpretation and what the article actually says. They are not the same thing.

Seems pretty straightforward as far as fact checks go. The Paris Accord says nothing about coal, it's all about emissions. We could increase coal use too if we wanted to, as long as our emissions go down. So really, the statement from Trump is true but misleading.

"It" doesn't stop us, we negotiated this as part of a global agreement to reduce emissions. Because we're the world's biggest source of emissions and also the richest, our responsibility is greater than that of a developing country like India that can't afford new nuclear plants and whose citizens can't afford solar roofs.

Okay..."India can double their emissions but the US can't. In fact, the US has to decrease theirs."?

Adding additional facts is valuable. To continue your India example, they have pledged to reduce emissions 33 to 35 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. So yes, they may increase their coal production, but now I know they are also taking other steps to reduce emissions.

Unlike the rest of the article, this section doesn't make an explicit summary claim about the truth or untruth of the President's claims. There is no "true but..." header.

If you think some of the facts that they provide -- such as the fact that the accord doesn't mention the word "coal" -- are irrelevant, that's cool. PolitiFact does not draw a conclusion from this fact, and suggesting it does and then blasting it for having done so is pretty frustrating.

I also feel that by cherry-picking this one instance, one misses the larger thrust of TFA. You seem to be frustrated that PolitiFact is saying "yes, but" a lot, but what's wrong with that? If the additional context is not useful to you, that's cool. You're entitled not to care. But to me, it's quite useful, and speaks pretty directly to many of the top-level poster's points.

Trump: The Paris Agreement would result in "lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories and vastly diminished economic production."

PolitiFact: "Take these statistics with a grain of salt." Followed by an explanation of where Trump's claim comes from and why it is weak.

Trump: "China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can't build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement."

PolitiFact: "China has cut its use of coal three years in a row," with a citation.

Trump: "Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree -- think of that; this much -- Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount."

PolitiFact: "[The Paris Agreement] shaves 0.2 C of warming if [it's] maintained through 2100, compared with what we assessed would have been the case by extending existing measures (due to expire in 2020) based on earlier international agreements."

IOW Paris gets us 0.2C under the previous agreement, but by pulling out of Paris, we get no agreement, not the previous agreement, which expires. "Needs context."

Trump: "At 1 percent growth, renewable sources of energy can meet some of our domestic demand. But at 3 or 4 percent growth, which I expect, we need all forms of available American energy, or our country will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts."

PolitiFact: Nobody seriously expects us to get 3-4% growth.

The statement is pretty clearly saying it does NOT tell the US to stop using coal. The poor phrasing confused you.

The one crucial point that IMO is very false: That the US is "already ahead". The US produces around 2-2.5x the CO2 per capita compared to EU and China (which interestingly are similar now after China's economic rise).

Coal isn't really relevant. What's most relevant is the way you do housing and living: Poorly isolated homes spread across the countr, far from work and cultural centers, with its inhabitants insiting on having 20C in summer and 23C in winter and driving huge trucks to work alone.

If you're a U.S. citizen who doesn't work in coal, why would you ever want more coal plants to be built here? Even besides global warming, there are some very real externalities to coal - acid rain, smog, increased asthma & respiratory illnesses.

I live in California and have been to China, and I know which air I'd rather breathe, even despite California's terrain & wind patterns being very conducive to catching air pollution in a bowl. Let them fuck up their own atmosphere...it'd be better if they didn't fuck up ours too, but if somebody's gonna pollute, I'd rather it be them.

You might not want to build more, but you might not want to shutter them pre-end of life to avoid paying higher electricity costs.

I'm sure there are problems with the bill. However, I'm not really interested in after-the-event arguments from a party who've been so anti-science and such deniers for so long.

It's a bit like the Muslim ban that "wasn't" a Muslim ban. If you've been calling it a Muslim ban for a year, retroactively coming back and saying "nah, nah, it's a not a Muslim ban" isn't convincing to the courts. In much the same way, the President cherry-picking bits he doesn't like about the bill sounds hollow.

Yeah that's my biggest beef with the Paris Agreement. If it's about the global environment, why are all countries not compelled to participate equally? Don't let China off the hook and I think a lot of people would be less skeptical of the whole arrangement.

Realistically, poorer countries are going to be able to do almost nothing to help the global situation. The understanding is that richer countries (who, to be fair, have done the majority of polluting historically) will have to grant enormous subsidies to effect change in developing countries if we're going to meet international climate goals.

I guess that's a difficult pill to swallow if you espouse nationalist economic policies, but this isn't about Us vs. Them; we're talking about preventing massive devastation on a global scale. And the Paris accord was just the first step. We'll need to spend much more than Trump is already unwilling to pay if we want to avert disaster.

We're calling China and India poor countries now? In relation to the US every country is poor. But as you stated, it's a global problem. It needs a global solution. Pollute less! Hold everyone to the same standard.

One-size-fits-all policy proposals rarely succeed because they don't take account of historical and political realities. Your comments remind me of developers to treat user requests/complaints as problematic because they're so in love with their code base that they've forgotten that software is meant to serve the needs of the people who use it.

What would you call them? Yes, they're poor [0].

United States $57,436

China $8,113

India $1,723

It's easy to say that everyone should be held to the same standard when you're already the richest. The US uses 7032 kg of oil equivalent/capita, China 2029 kg/capita, India 614 kg/capita [1]. If you really want to hold everyone to the same standard you could cut your energy use by an order of magnitude and still use more than India. It's ridiculous to hear an american president try to paint developing countries as energy thirsty when the three most sold vehicles in the US are pickup trucks while most people in China and India can't afford any kind of car [2].

Like you said, it's a global problem. It won't be solved by whining about "unfair" economic terms and bragging about opening more coal mines.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/best-selling-cars-trucks-vehi...

We have poor People, country itself is quite rich. Both of them are top ten in military spending.

"The law, in its majesty, forbids the poor and the rich equally from sleeping under bridges."

A couple thoughts - what is equally? The US is the historically the largest contributor of greenhouse gases by a wide margin[1]. And last I checked, a vast majority of people support the agreement[2], including half of trump supporters.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/21/countrie... [2] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agre...

> The US is the historically the largest contributor of greenhouse gases by a wide margin

Sure, but guess what: China is right behind us. History means squat. They're a major polluter _right now_. Why are they not held to the same standard we are?

They could ask the same question - why is the US allowed to have higher per-capita emissions?

Why are per-capita emissions a more important number than net emissions? With the former, China is behind us (roughly half) whereas with the latter, they're roughly double based on the current Wikipedia numbers.

I'm not saying they're more important.

But as for why they are important, I think that there is some relationship between how people live and per-capita emissions. So if you ignore the population size and only look at net emissions, the people in larger countries would be held to a higher standard than the people in the smaller countries.

They're not held to the same standard because if they were, they would rightfull refuse to sign on:

China's GDP was 10.87 trillion USD in 2015 vs 17.95 trillion USD for the US. GDP per capita was 7,926 in 2015 vs 55,836 in the US. China is still a poor country.

When China reaches a comparable GDP per capita, then we can expect comparable cuts to be on the table.

Until then expecting sharp cuts from developing countries will not be a viable alternative.

China has a a few hundred thousand metric tons before they are close to the historical pollution we have contributed. And last I checked, they are still committed to taking action[1]... if only we could say the same.

Things I've learned in life(mostly the hard way) include that fair is not a thing and does not exist.

[1]https://www.c2es.org/international/key-country-policies/chin...

Another key sticking point is the unbounded legal liability under the agreement, for other countries to be able to sue the US for climate change effects if the aggressive targets are not met. It's disappointing that the world sees something as serious as climate change as an opportunity to get money from the US taxpayer, and that India and China are held to such low standards.

That said, Trump has a history of not being honest. He campaigned on increasing coal usage. That alone might have been enough for him to spike the deal.

FYI, I'm not into politics

Not meant as an attack on you, but but choosing not to be into politics basically means you occupy a secure enough position in society not to have to deal with personal anxiety about how political developments might impact you personally. Put more simply, you can afford to ignore politics but others cannot.

It's worth trying to imagine yourself yourself in the position of others on a regular basis so as to get a better understanding of why or how political issues might seem more urgent to them, not least people whose outlook you disagree with. I can readily see why economically disadvantaged coal miners in West virginia would support Trump, for example, since they don't see how the shift to carbon-free technology is going to benefit them economically. Of course I also think they're going to be severely disappointed, but I don't regret the effort invested in trying to understand their political alignment.

EDIT: I'll just quote this here:

> The fact that the agreement only commits governments to keeping warming below an increase of 2 degrees, rather than a much safer firm target of 1.5 degrees, was lobbied for and won by the United States.

> The fact that the agreement left it to individual nations to determine how much they were willing to do to reach that temperature target, allowing them to come to Paris with commitments that collectively put us on a disastrous course towards more than 3 degrees of warming, was lobbied for and won by the United States.

> The fact that the agreement treats even these inadequate commitments as non-binding, which means governments apparently do not have anything to fear if they ignore their commitments, is something else that was lobbied for and won by the United States.

> The fact that the agreement specifically prohibits poor countries from seeking damages for the costs of climate disasters was lobbied for and won by the United States.

> The fact that it is an “agreement” or an “accord” and not a treaty — the very thing that makes it possible for Trump to stage his action-movie slow-mo walk away, world in flames behind him — was lobbied for and won by the United States.

This accord already is a massive insult to developing countries, who give up the right to hold those responsible who caused climate effects on their country. India can't sue the West for the costs that climate change, and the refugee crisis in Bangladesh will cost. India can't use any of the quick industrialization concepts that the West used, at massive cost to the environment. All committments are voluntary.

The west has spent centuries polluting the planet, and gaining an economic advantage. And now China and India are asking for a few years — not even a decade — in an entirely voluntary agremeent.

And yet, it's somehow unfair to the US? This is laughable. And I say that as a German willing to pay my 0.40€/kWh electricity.

The amount of CO2 produced by China in a year dwarfs the first 100 years of the industrial revolution's output.

And what fraction of those emissions are directly driven by the manufacture of goods produced for us in the developed western world?

Now you are on to something.

Perhaps those goods shouldn't be made in China, an ocean or two away from where they are needed, under lax emissions laws. If we held China to the same standard as the US and EU, some of that problem would go away. It wouldn't just make fly-over country happy. Huge container ships do not run on solar power. They burn huge amounts of heavy fuel oil, which is nearly tar and not too far from being coal.

So, you want everything to be ten times more expensive?

China can be so cheap because everything is in the same place. IC production, PCB production, them being combined, device assembly, etc.

It would be far more expensive to ship all the parts separately.

Even more expensive to just ship the raw material from china to where it is needed.

And with expensive I mean both in terms of climate and money.

You forget how it got that way. Parts were made in the USA, then shipped to China. Part production moved. Part production can move the other way, back to the USA. It tends to go where the devices are made. The same goes for raw material. The USA has resources to mine.

Moving any part of the supply chain tends to encourage the other parts to move. If part production moved, then both mining and device production would have an increased incentive to move. If mining moved, part production would have an incentive to move, and if that moved then device production would have an incentive to move. It all works both ways, with suppliers and customers tending to move toward each other.

So yes, we can put everything back in the USA, and it can be affordable, but we face an uphill battle. The battle is only lost if you give up trying.

That’s a cute statement.

So, how are you going to mine stuff in the US that the US has no resource deposits of?

I want to see you move rare earth production into the US.

The USA has rare earth mines in California. They got shut down because China supported mining as a strategic asset, meanwhile the EPA was pretty sadistic. Getting that going again is trivial. If we match the legal situation in China, we're back in business.

Another big source is fly ash, which we get from burning coal. This actually has a decently high concentration of the more urgently needed elements. The more coal we burn, the more fly ash we have. Burn more, and get rare earth elements as a bonus.

The amounts needed are tiny. The only trouble with importing from China is that China considers control of rare earth elements to be part of a strategy to dominate the world. China restricts exports, and threatens to restrict them more. This is of course a national security issue for every other country in the world.

> Their talking point is that the west gained its position of power through dirty tactics

What, generating pollution when its effects on the planet weren't understood? Now we know better, right?

Like most climate policy, it becomes a lot less appealing the more specific it gets.

I think what this misses is that the per-capita emissions matter too, not just overall emissions. It's kind of unrealistic to ask a country to lower its emissions when its per-capita emissions are already just a fraction of yours.

To give a more concrete analogy - suppose there are two countries, A and B. People in both countries like eating tuna. A has far fewer people than B, but the average person in A eats 10x more tuna than the average person in B. As tuna supplies dwindle, would it be reasonable for A to ask B to reduce their consumption of tuna?

Why don't you exclude the half of the Chinese population that's basically living a medieval lifestyle and recalculate those per-capita numbers, hmm?

What would be the rationale for doing so?

Should we also exclude the half of the US population that uses the least carbon emissions?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't exclude them - these aren't rhetorical questions. I'm just trying to understand your reasoning.

> I'm just trying to understand your reasoning.

They completely drag down the per capita numbers. You're basically lumping people producing near-US levels of emissions with half the population producing basically nothing.

> Should we also exclude the half of the US population that uses the least carbon emissions?

Not anywhere close in terms of magnitude.

I don't really understand why the fact that they drag down the per-capita numbers is a rationale for excluding them. Why is it that the people producing no emissions should not be allowed to raise their standard of living to that of people in the US?

Because we will destroy the planet. We can't have everyone living at that level.

Agreed - so is it more fair to have everyone living at the same sustainable level, or is it more fair to restrict people with a low carbon footprint from increasing their footprint, so that the people with a large carbon footprint can sustain their way of living?

Obviously, as a country, you want to get away with whatever you can. I'm just saying it's difficult to get people to agree to something that they think is unfair to them.

Interesting that Trump estimates the cost of the Paris Agreement in terms of the economy - 3.5 trillion in lost GDP by 2040 - but quotes the benefits in Celcius - two-tenths of one degree by 2100.

What exactly is Trump's estimate for the economic cost of climate change by 2100 if the Paris Agreement is not implemented?

I notice most articles and news coverage dont get too much into the details. Its nice to hear some counterpoints.

Aside from the environmental effects, Paris accord is an excellent vehicle for guaranteed ROI on third world "green" and "renewable" investments. What better plan than to take taxpayer money involuntarily and forward it to third world renewable investments. If everyone chips in just a little bit in the name of doing something good why would anybody try and stop it? A brilliant plan grinding to a halt all because of Trump.

Most of that is either incorrect, or completely missing the point.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jun/01/...

China and India need to industrialize and modernize in order for them to transition to cleaner energy sources. Per capita, they produce only a fraction of what we do.

It's unrealistic to expect developing nations to shoulder the same burden as developed ones. The deal is weighted to put more on the countries that have modern economies able to make the transition. Idea being that western developed nations can transition into renewables far faster and make up for the developing world's inability to do so, and at least somewhat mitigating temperature rise.

Please post what he said is incorrect. I read the article and found he is mostly correct depending on models etc. Perhaps I missed something but there were no blatent lies etc from my reading.

Correct facts based on extreme models. Yay! It's not a lie if you fudge the numbers right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com