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Comment by keithnz | Hacker News Reader

From the article links, I think the overall emissions are probably the better thing to look at

https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-ec...

seems to show year after year, we keep increasing. Except 2009 ( I wonder if that was because of the fallout of the economic crash in 2008? )

Assuming all the warnings about climate change related to C02 emissions. Seems like we aren't going to be able to turn the ship before it is has a massive impact. My guess is nothing will change until we have some good alternatives to fossil fuel (Nuclear fusion? Awesome battery tech? )

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I'm a greenie, but I do figure natural gas could potentially be a stepping stone while we try to figure out the fossil fuel alternative. I don't see it as a long term solution, but at half the CO2 and much cleaner burning, it definitely seems like we should be scrapping coal as fast as we can- which could meaningfully decrease the US's total emissions.

Then, we figure out what to do next. We just need Zeno's Paradox working for us.

Nuclear please.

Sure, and that could be the next step. Unfortunately building reactors is a decade long process. This can be where gas turbines, which can be built far faster, could be a bridge.

> My guess is nothing will change until we have some good alternatives to fossil fuel

Not even necessarily then. Fission is a good alternative, and it could've been massively deployed decades ago. (Just think of how many billions of tons of emissions could've been avoided.)

More on point... more radioactive material is released by coal emissions than by nuclear reactor waste output annually.

The rest of the world will fund the technology and scale necessary, then in 10-15 years when renewables plus storage and electric cars are cheaper than the existing technology US Republicans will have a volte-face, deploy at scale, and claim they saved the world through unregulated capitalism. And the rest of the world won’t mind.

Let's hope we can put some steep fines on the US for inaction, or other penalties (tariffs in other products / technologies) to recoup those investments, done while the biggest polluter is refusing to take responsibility.

The ideal solution would be to tax exporting climate tech to the US, but the world wants a fast adoption of clean technologies, so we need to balance this unfair situation otherwise.

Do you have an example of a similar fine on a nation from history that worked?

The punishment of Germany after WWI is surely the finest of such examples

Let's do it better this time.

The US is anyway in a belligerant course, there is no reason for the world to opt for appeasement.

Backing down from perfect legitimate demands just because maybe the US could retaliate militarilly (to non-military measures) is ludicrous.

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail.

The US could also retaliate economically. It is the largest economy in the world and possesses the most attractive consumer market. Germany threatens to "punish" the US -> No more importing BMWs. Unfortunately Europes economy has lagged for so many years that it is unrealistic to threaten economic sanctions

The US can go one step further very easily, by doing nothing. All it has to do is look the other way for five minutes and Russia will begin reassembling its empire in eastern Europe. It would immediately begin taking territory back. Russia would rip Europe apart, trivially, because of how weak Western Europe is militarily today. It's entirely unable to defend itself, outside of France and the UK having nukes (which they're not going to use to stop Russia in eastern Europe).

The US could also let Russia begin messing with Canada's northern territory. Canada is entirely unable to defend itself, with their tiny 1% military budget. There's nothing Canada could do to stop Russia.

The US could let China take its historic anger out on Japan; they would end up conquering Japan one way or another. The US could pull troops out of South Korea, the North would immediately conquer / obliterate the South. China would immediately take Taiwan, with hardly a fight at all.

China would then move to become far more aggressive toward Australia, viewing it as a potential resource colony. Australia's only defense option would be to develop nukes as fast as possible.

If the US stood down in Latin America as the overwatch in the hemisphere, those countries would begin killing each other for territorial conquest. Venezuela is the obvious prize there to be invaded by Brazil or Colombia. Lots of smaller Latin American nations would fall.

The world as we know it would collapse rapidly if the US just looked the other way and stopped restraining the type of conquest behavior that pervades all of human history. That would of course be to its own detriment if it went too far, as authoritarian China would likely then rule the planet, perhaps for a very long time.

No, but I also do not have a precedent for a country not taking responsibility for CO2 emisions.

It's still a good solution.

It would appear form the source that the US has not been inactive. Just because it is not government mandated like in Europe, doesn't mean its not working. The US is much more private sector focused than Europe. The first example that comes to my mind is Tesla. They've been a non government mandated positive that would be impossible in other countries

More could be done. This can not be left to the vagaries of the markets. The whole world is committed, except the US, even after being the biggest polluter, currently, cumulatively, per capita and per GDP.

Very unfair.

US is not currently the biggest source of CO2. That would be China.

It does not have the highest CO2 emissions per capita. Have a look at Canada and Australia, for example.

It certainly does not have the highest CO2 emissions per GDP. Tons of countries are higher on that count, for example China.

What is the:

- rank of CO2 emissions, total, currently

- rank of CO2 emissions, total, cumulative

- rank of CO2 emissions, per capita, currently

- rank of CO2 emissions, per capita, cumulative

- rank of CO2 emissions, per GDP, currently

- rank of CO2 emissions, per GDP, cumulative

- rank of CO2 emissions, per capita-per GDP, currently

- rank of CO2 emissions, per capita-per GDP, cumulative

The US is at the top, or near the top, in all of those lists.

Not only it is the biggest polluter according to those ranks, it is also the only country refusing to take responsibility.

The US is not the biggest polluter according to those ranks in fact. You're claiming that despite your own setup proving that isn't the case.

China is the biggest output source of CO2 on earth and their output is rising aggressively and is likely set to continue doing so as their people see their standard of living climb. The overwhelmingly majority of their energy comes from coal, and they have no intention to put an end to that. That means China is going to keep right on widening the gap on their CO2 output lead.

The US is not the leader on CO2 emissions per capita. Saudi Arabia and Australia as both higher. And at the rate Canada is going, it's either already higher or is going to be soon.

The cumulative data isn't a valid excuse. Any nation that had the largest economy from 1890 to 1990 would have been the leader by default on cumulative emissions. There were no good renewable alternative approaches, and until the 1960s nuclear power wasn't practical at all. Besides, at the rate China is polluting, it's going to rapidly overtake the US on every cumulative point: its economy is radically bigger than the US economy was both 50 and 100 years ago and is putting out radically more CO2 (in every respect).

Every year of CO2 output by China is equal to 20+ years of US CO2 output prior to WW2. For one example, just look at the size of the US steel industry in 1930 vs China's today. It won't take China more than another few years at their current rate of CO2 output, to perpetually own the cumulative figures across the board. China's economy is already twice the size in real terms of the US economy in 1965, when the US owned 1/2 of all global manufacturing; in just one decade, China will be 4x the size of the US economy in 1965.

But it's not just "not government mandated", it's that the current US president went as far as to ban the term "climate change" building a list of "phrases to be avoided".

Surely that doesn't help, no matter how private sector focused the USA is, in fact it's actively undermining the effort to save our planet.

Speaking of which, what incentive does the private sector have to save the planet beyond its own back yard?

Why does Tesla do it? Isn't it like, Elon Musk's personal mission, his own choice? Is this a common occurrence yet, then, in the US automotive industry? Are they gaining an majority yet on the other companies, you know the ones that couldn't give a rat's ass about saving the planet. Cause I only ever hear about Tesla being a unique outlier, saving the planet through capitalism instead of regulation. But since the US private sector is doing such a great job without regulation and the government's deafening silence, I guess there must be a ton more of these companies operating at similar scale, developing new tech to help solve climate change. Are other industries doing the same?

Are there any historical examples where unregulated capitalism somehow ended up solving ecological problems of its own creation? Of course I mean, adjusted for the amount of times it wrecked ecosystems because of its tendency to deep dive into tragedy-of-the-commons scenarios.

The really large scale ecological problems I've seen (somewhat) solved in my lifetime have all been through government regulation. Acid rain and ozone holes, to be specific.

Isn't it, if you think about it rationally, a capitalist solution can only solve problems on a local level. If it doesn't affect the bottom line, then there is no incentive to be "better", because companies measure "better" in profit, anything else is meaningless. As soon as the company grows to control things on a global scale, and therefore be incentivised to keep their resources (living environment) intact on a global scale, then it might as well be a government. At least in terms of power.

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