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Comment by chunkyslink | Hacker News Reader

Sigh, I wish the USA were not leaving the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement is a joke. Most countries just signed it then did what they wanted any way. Yes it would be better PR if US signed it and ignored it, but it wouldn't make any difference. https://www.nature.com/news/prove-paris-was-more-than-paper-...

The Paris Agreement is a joke also because there was no universal obligation it imposed. Consider, for instance, the promise China made to stop increasing emissions by 2030. You read that right, _stop increasing_. Not reduce at all. Also, that's about when economists figured emissions would naturally stop increasing in any case. A bunch of nations got together, asked everyone to send in a promise, stapled them all together, and called it a "climate accord".

If the press paid attention to this, I think we'd have a chance at an agreement that did something.

Instead, it's like a participation trophy for politicians.

And yet somehow China is beating everyone else https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-climatechange-carbo...

Funny how even a partially planned economy is more effective.

Everyone's emissions are down due to manufacturing slowdowns globally. If you're willing to select a narrow set of data points as this article does, then you can draw any conclusion you want.

Not true, It's slippery language (and unauditable Chinese press statements). So if you can spot it!

"China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, cut its 2005 carbon intensity level, or the amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide it produces per unit of economic growth, by 46 percent in 2017, Xie told a forum in Shanghai"

Don't be tricked by misleading measurement conditions. Their total carbon emissions have been increasing at an explosive rate.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo...

Of course they've been going up, but per capita they might reach equilibrium before NA levels.

Europe is doing quite well on that chart.

[0] https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

The glaciers don't care about per-capita.

Aren't there a bunch of states and cities who still intend to keep pace with the Paris accord?

Many cities have pledged to behold future city administrations to changes that the current administrations themselves will not be responsible for implementing.

Importantly, those cities aren't significant emitters.

It is easy to promise little to no change.

It's better than nothing but I thought the current thinking is that the Paris agreement isn't enough anyway?

Distractions are often worse than nothing.

Fun fact: between 2005 and 2017 the US carbon emissions fell 12.4% on an absolute basis and 19.9% on per-capita basis. The reductions continued under the Trump administration which would suggest that they are economically sensible in their own right. In 2017 we emitted about as much carbon as we did in 1990. That's not perfect: the EU now emits 19% less CO2 than it emitted in 1990, but that's a heck of a lot better than China which now emits twice as much CO2 as the US does, and which was exempt from some of the more aggressive parts of the agreement until 2030 (and isn't at all on track to comply even then). The whole thing was idiotic for the US to sign, irrespective of what you think of climate change: it has no teeth whatsoever against by far the largest polluter, and therefore it's not worth the paper it's written on, and it would not move the needle one iota.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40094

We can still produce less carbon emissions without being in the agreement.

The US is only 20% of total C02 output. Even if it were 0, China and India are still ruining the climate and the Paris accords didn't stop this.

Per-capita doesn't matter. Reality doesn't care about fairness.

Per-land area US is still one of the largest polluters.

That's irrelevant, what matters is absolute production per country, because of politics.

Make slightly more relevant with your personal stance then. Because it is very much relevant.

So, the solution to the climate crisis is to split the US into 50 separate countries then? I mean, they could still cooperate in some sort of federation, united in their common goals, some sort of union of states or something, but without the climate impact!

Whether US may or may not reduce emissions is completely irrelevant. There's an accord, and US is out. Period.

It's a prisoner's dilemma[0] instance we are all in, so finger-pointing does not help with anything, for anyone.

Furthermore, countries you point very lightly make up almost half the world population. And their emissions per capita are laughably low(especially India) compared to US.

1: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/prisoners-dilemma.asp

20% "only"? USA is 7% of all countries superficies, 4% of all countries population

Also, other countries with higher pollution level should never be a reference or excuse

But the US is over 24% of global GDP [0], so that means we pollute less per unit of Global GDP than the combined rest of the world on average.

I'd say there's room to improve, but if we compared all countries this way, we might have a good conversation.

For instance, Germany may be skewed as high pollution per capita, but roughly 1/2 of their economy is for exports. Penalizing them because they make things there for people around the world wouldn't seem fair.

[0] - https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/24/infographic-heres-how-t...

Yes, it should be an excuse and a reference. If the US is going to ruin its economy by being forced off of fossil fuels, other countries shouldn't be able to use it as an advantage to take power and continue to ruin the environment.

Where would our economy be ruined by transitioning away from fossil fuels? The renewable sector has insane room for growth and employment. The fact that we'd all be way healthier with less pollution in the air and water would lead directly to less medical costs and less time missed from work and higher productivity!

Oh, we're only 20% of a global genocide, so it's okay.

That's what your argument sounds like.

Right. So 80% of a global genocide can be ignored? Two can play this game.

You missed the point. Many people (myself included are concerned about BOTH/All of it. Those who point out that we are responsible for "only" 20% usually have disingenuous motives toward shifting blame on to someone else, and towards inaction.

Well, if only 20% of carbon emissions are cleared, the world is still doomed.

My point is that nobody wants do do anything about the other 80%. No punishment and excuses are given that they are 'developing nations', so they can freely pollute the earth and destroy the environment.

We really should be concentrating o n that 80%, and we aren't, which makes me question the motives of things like the Paris agreement.

While we bend over backwards to save the environment, these nations just use it as a way to boost their own economies while continuing to pollute and break every agreement and lie about it.

We need to do something serious greenhouse emissions and gases already in the atmosphere. I was also bummed hearing about Trump pulling us out of the Paris accord, but the lack of inclusion of China and other major greenhouse emitters makes the agreement dangerous. Maybe his 8d chess will actually get us something good where the next president can remove the tariffs in exchange for greenhouse gas controls?

How do you figure that?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/china-vows-commit-par...

There is a vast difference between what China promises to do and what it actually does. For example, it's repeatedly committed to stop massively subsidising its steel and aluminium production and driving everyone else out of business, but has not done so whatsoever. (One of the less widely appreciated results of that is that China's plants produce much more CO2 than the ones they're driving out of business, due to less efficient processes and dirtier power sources.) Climate change is similar - they may have committed to reducing their emissions, but in reality what we've seen is a massive build-out of coal power and heating.

There is a vast difference between what the entire fucking world promised at Paris and what they have actually done since. Only the EU seems to have certain intent to move toward neutrality and their efforts have, at best, been intermittent and inconsistent.

Meanwhile the West keeps sending more business, more manufacturing and more recycling to China - they are, in no small part, merely moving the accounting of the West's emissions. Of course they are also a developing country - it's not realistic for them to do that entirely sustainably without Western subsidy - an idea not discussed seriously since probably Rio in the early 90s, when there was briefly talk of an intent to help the developing world fast-track right past our dirty phase of development. China have been inconsistent about coal too. So have some countries in the best performing bloc, the EU. Notably The Netherlands, Poland and Germany.

You're not wrong, but from a political standpoint it's impossible to justify giving any sort of subsidies to China as long as they're pursuing an expansionist foreign policy and have nuclear missiles pointed at us.

"Everything before the "but" is meant to be ignored by the speaker; and everything after the "but" should be ignored by the listener." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Yes we all know that Taleb is a snarky psuedo intellectual who isn't actually as smart as he thinks he is. You don't need to point that out by reposting his nonsense ramblings.

USA, Russia and others point missiles at plenty of places too - that is not a reason or even valid excuse.

I do think it was absurd China (and to a lesser extent India) came out of Paris with an almost limitless potential to increase emissions until 2030. Neither are undeveloped and remotely like the world's poorest.

A more sensible approach would have been to tie subsidy to each, and every trade deal. An EU or USA that truly cared about emissions would impose a carbon or renewables levy on products coming in from China and others. The US would push their pet the WTO to bake in emissions into global trade rules.

Had any of that been done round about Rio, or even as late as Paris, we might have a far more optimistic outlook.

Yet the actual results have been disappointing. China's carbon emissions have only continued to increase since 2016, whereas most other countries have been decreasing emissions.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo...

>but the lack of inclusion of China and other major greenhouse emitters makes the agreement dangerous

You may be thinking of the Kyoto protocol, which did exempt "developing" countries like China and India (which I agree is very flawed). The Paris agreement includes China though.

China's Paris commitments were significantly laxer than other nations. Commiting only to stop increasing only by 2030.

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