They've just scaled slightly back on a massive coal consumption plan they implemented in the last few years. Nice, but hardly worth any recognition in the shadow of the damage they have already done.
See here: http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...
U.S. generated, per 2014 data, 1612 TWh from Coal and 1272 TWh from Gas. China generated 3681 TWh from Coal and 91 TWh from Gas.
Compare this to India, which generated a mere 800 TWh from Coal and 89 TWh from Gas.
And this when India has more than 4 times the population of US and according to some estimates, unverified, more population than China.
A country having less output compared to more developed countries isn't surprising, nor the issue.
What part of this is comparing India to India?
The OP's point is still reasonable in terms of both absolute magnitude as well as per-capita, in that India, as a developing country and yet one of the most populous countries on the planet, consumes far less energy than developed states and is not as immediate a threat to life as we know it on a global basis, such as the US is. Indian policies towards coal consumption, no matter how progressive they can get, cannot hope to match the immediate impact their counterparts in the US can achieve today (and choose not to), and the current US administration does not really have grounds to point fingers elsewhere.
How valuable is knowing population size in order to predict coal usage?
Wonder how Indians do a damage to the enviornment, by having the lowest per capita emissions on planet.
FYI - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
You can for example combine EU into one entity and say they pollute a lot. Or split china/india/US into 50 countries and say they don't contribute much individually.
In effect favouring being born lucky.. in any random sample of the world population you have 33% chance of being born in just 2 countries . Do these people get fair representatation in any international forum ? It is either 1 vote per country or powerfull ones have all of it.
Landmass also is not effective measure . You will end up with Australia, Canada and Russia driving the agenda
Pop density has more to do with ability to grow food and energy efficiency of food consumption - comparing pop density and talking about over population has to factor that in saying china and india are overcrowded is not a sensible argument(they are over populated but not to extent people think) .
We need fresh perspective on how we see the world , arbitrary national boundaries , Mercator projections and biased schooling makes our world view very distorted
All of the above applies to the US as well . State borders are arbitrary. People in Pop dense centers like california do not get even the 10th of the representatation as say Wyoming.
California could be 8th largest country in terms of economic output and has a pop larger most countries in the world yet people living there do not have a say proportional to their impact in domestic or international politic is that fair ?
You are correct environment is not reason we should be worried . it is about the people, not the planet. 99% of the all species are already extinct one more large scale extinction event while terrible is not the end of life on this planet and the planet has seen far worse, life will survive long after we are gone. Sea level raise will adversely 60 % of the human population who live in the coast many of whom are poor. Changing weather patterns and climate change will affect the developing countries far more than first world countries who will have the resources to manage the effects . There are whole island countries that will disappear within the turn of the century. This is why developing countries are in very touch spot, they will need to balance both development of basic services and also find a meaningful solution to the problem.
Yes. Area doesn't consume energy, people do. Otherwise Russia would be the most eco-friendly country in the world, and something like Luxembourg should be considered an abject failure of environmental policy.
CO2 does not care about which piece of land it gets emitted from: As far as the main subject under discussion goes (in contrast to, say, air quality), pollution per square foot is an utterly meaningless metric.
If we could point to a plume of obviously-warmed land downwind of a city, it'd be a much easier sell to the layman.
As expected, much more favorable terms were renegotiated to get India on board; India now gets to grow their CO2 emission as a function of GDP. A simple extrapolation of this shows they'll double their already huge CO2 output by the end of the decade, far surpassing the US.
Made the deal a lot easier to sign.
Why is this a problem? India has 4x the population...
How can other countries do that?
Besides, none of you have even bothered to look at the figures. India's current coal consumption is less than 30% of the US, for a population 4-5 times larger. Even if we double our coal consumption, it wouldn't outstrip US at their current levels.
Can you explain to me how this works?
You have to look at the trends. India has radically changed directions in the last few years, and we can expect in the coming years it will change even more.
Also, The Indian govt has a moral obligation to give it's citizens the basic amenities like power to the houses. They have been parallelly using coal and renewables to do it, now the cost of solar per unit is lesser than coal, so it's planning to cut down on coal.
This sort of argument is exactly why I see environmentalism as anti-human at its heart.
But I'm not at all sure it's true of the majority of environmentalist organisations and parties.
I think there is as much of a disconnect between green voters and the desires of green politicians and lobbyists, as there is between the interests of Trump voters and Trump's interests.
It's fairly common to hear green orgs denouncing industrialisation, economic growth, free trade, etc. In New Zealand, the Green Party was in part founded by literal Communists, left adrift and unfunded after the fall of the USSR.
To summarise, I think that most people who think they are supporting what you said - a high standard of living in a sustainable manner - are actually supporting anti-capitalists.