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Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Or phasing out coal. See my other reply.

Coal is such a huge contributor to the problem that you can almost say that climate change is a coal problem. Not quite, but you're not wrong. I am deeply puzzled by anyone discussing climate change who doesn't bring up coal first, yet I see tons of discussion where coal is not even mentioned.

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Yea, coal kills on the order of a million people per year [1], here and now. Is also a huge contributor to global warming. But a lot of people seem more concerned about their neighbors stake or vacation... It’s a paradox, I must say.

1. https://endcoal.org/health/

I'm interested in the justification for this. The following link says about 25% of US GHG emissions are from coal, but coal burning makes up the vast majority GHG emissions for electricity production.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=environme...

You are only looking at US emissions, not world emissions. The US is not the only country on Earth and its use of coal has been falling for some time now.

Oh, I was not aware the US is not the only country on Earth.

Snark aside, here's a source that says globally coal power production accounts for 30% of global CO2 emissions. That's a lot, but not quite the whole problem.

https://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/

Actually I agree with you that getting upset over meat eating and plastic straws is a silly way to avoid tackling the much larger issues.

Also, I was genuinely asking for more information, and am still interested.

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